SUMMING UP THE WEEK
July 29, 2022
Archive for July, 2022
22 states sue USDA for tying school lunch funding to compliance with LGBT ideology
By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter
Read more at https://www.christianpost.com/news/22-states-sue-usda-for-tying-school-lunch-funding-to-lgbt-policy.html/
More than 20 state attorneys general have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture for threatening to withhold funds for the National School Lunch Program from schools that do not comply with the Biden administration’s LGBT ideology.
On May 5, the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service announced its intention to interpret “the prohibition on discrimination based on sex found in Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972” to include “discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”
In a memorandum published that same day, the agency informed state and regional directors of all Food and Nutrition Services programs of the policy change. The department cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County finding that the provision of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibiting discrimination based on sex also applies to sexual orientation and gender identity as the justification for the new interpretation of Title IX.
As a result of the USDA’s interpretation of Title IX, “state and local agencies, program operators and sponsors that receive funds from FNS must investigate allegations of discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation” and “update their non-discrimination policies and signage to include prohibitions against discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.”
The FNS administers the National School Lunch Program, which provides low-cost and free lunches to 29.6 million children at nearly 100,000 public and nonprofit private schools in the fiscal year 2019.
On Tuesday, Tennessee’s Republican Attorney General Herbert Slatery joined 21 other Republican attorneys general in filing a lawsuit against the USDA and its top officials in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee Knoxville Division. The attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia are also plaintiffs in the lawsuit. The states contend that USDA’s interpretation of Title IX would cause the plaintiff states to lose federal funding for the National School Lunch Program and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (SNAP) Program.
Describing the USDA as the latest example of the Biden administration’s “misinterpretation” of Title IX, the lawsuit states that the final rule issued by the department requires states to ensure that “no person, on the grounds of sex, including gender identity and sexual orientation, race, color, age, political belief, religious creed, disability, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be otherwise subject to discrimination under SNAP.” The final rule takes effect on Aug. 15.
Additional guidance issued by the USDA requires “FNS nutrition assistance programs, state or local agencies, and their subrecipients” to post a nondiscrimination statement. The statement.
The complaint argues that language in the additional guidance indicates that while “the old policy prohibited discrimination only ‘in any program or activity conducted or funded by USDA,’ the new policy seemingly implies to each program-administering ‘institution’ as a whole.” It warned that “the USDA Memoranda and Final Rule [will] Irreparably Harm Plaintiff States.”
The lawsuit listed plaintiff states’ “laws or policies that at least arguably conflict with” the USDA’s final rule.
Tennessee state law asserts that “[a] student’s gender for purposes of participation in a public middle school or high school interscholastic athletic activity or event must be determined by the student’s sex at the time of the student’s birth.” The state law also provides a right of action against schools that permit “a member of the opposite sex to enter [a] multi-occupancy restroom or changing facility while other persons [are] present.”
The complaint urged a federal judge to issue “a declaratory judgment holding unlawful the Department’s Memoranda and Final Rule” and a “declaratory judgment holding that Plaintiffs are not bound by the Department’s Memoranda and Final Rule.”
The complaint also sought a declaration that the department did not have the authority to penalize and withhold federal funds from Title IX and Food and Nutrition Act recipients that “continue to separate students by biological sex in appropriate circumstances.”
The plaintiff states requested similar declarations preventing retaliation against Title IX and Food and Nutrition Act recipients that “maintain showers, locker rooms, bathrooms, residential facilities, and other living facilities separated by biological sex or regulate each individual’s access to those facilities based on the individual’s biological sex.”
The states also want the court to prohibit retaliation against schools that “do not require employees or students to use a transgender individual’s preferred pronouns,” “maintain athletic teams separated by biological sex or” assign individuals to teams based on biological sex.
The lawsuit comes a month after 26 state attorneys general wrote a letter to President Joe Biden outlining their concerns with the USDA’s administrative action and asking the administration to rescind the guidance.
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack defended the agency’s actions as part of a commitment to “administering all its programs with equity and fairness and serving those in need with the highest dignity.”
“A key step in advancing these principles is rooting out discrimination in any form – including discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity,” he added. “At the same time, we must recognize the vulnerability of the LGBTQI+ communities and provide them with an avenue to grieve any discrimination they face. We hope that by standing firm against these inequities we will help bring about much-needed change.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
Knife-wielding robber attacks Texas store clerk. But clerk has a gun, and she fights back — shooting her attacker multiple times.
By DAVE URBANSKI | July 29, 2022
Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/texas-store-clerk-shoots-robber/
A Texas store clerk fought back against a robber who attacked her with a knife last week, shooting the suspect multiple times and landing him in the hospital. Beaumont Police got a call about a robbery in progress at the Everest Food Mart in the 2800 block of Eastex Freeway around 11:30 p.m. last Friday, KBMT-TV reported. While police were on their way to the scene, the station said they were told the store clerk shot the robber multiple times. Police arrived at the store within minutes of receiving the initial call, KBMT said.
Officer Haley Morrow told the station’s news crew at the scene that a store clerk called and said a man entered the store with a knife and robbed her, KBMT reported, adding that the clerk suffered minor injuries. A preliminary investigation determined the robber displayed a knife and attacked the clerk prior to her shooting him, the Port Arthur News reported.
Officer Morrow emphasized to the station that crime victims have the right to defend themselves.
“Essentially, you know, we see the aggravated robberies often; in a lot of cases what we don’t see is … a victim fight back and defend themselves,” she noted to the KBMT. “But, you know, we want to make sure that people understand that they do have that right.”
The suspect was identified as 62-year-old William Coleman of Beaumont, KBMT said, adding that he was taken to an area hospital for treatment for serious injuries. Coleman later was charged with aggravated robbery, the station said.
Once Coleman is released from the hospital, he will be taken to the Jefferson County Jail and held on a $250,000 bond, KBMT reported.
Teacher’s unions upset that Florida to address teacher shortage by hiring veterans without a college degree: ‘We do not believe that anyone … can be a teacher in a classroom’
By CORTNEY WEIL | July 28, 2022
Teacher’s unions in Florida are concerned about a new state policy which will allow veterans without a college degree to receive a five-year voucher to teach at a state public or charter school. According to reports, Florida currently has more than 4,300 teaching vacancies with a new school year fast approaching. In an effort to fill some of these essential positions, the state has adjusted the requirements for military veterans in the hopes of attracting some of them into the classroom.
Veterans who wish to apply for the teaching voucher must have:
- Minimum of 48 months of active-duty military service with an honorable/medical discharge
- Minimum of 60 college credits with a 2.5 grade point average
- Passing score on a Florida subject area examination for bachelor’s level subjects which demonstrate mastery of subject area knowledge
- Employment in a Florida school district, including charter schools
The policy went into effect on July 1 and offers fee waivers for military spouses as well, though contrary to some reports, spouses are still subject to the same requirements as other civilians.
While many teachers acknowledge that the shortage is dire and that fewer and fewer recent graduates are electing to become teachers, many Florida teachers’ union members are unhappy with the new policy for veterans, particularly the education requirements.
“We are always fighting to lift our profession up,” Carmen Ward, president of the Alachua County Education Association and a member of the Florida Education Association, said. “We have a lot of veterans that work currently in our schools. However, they have four-year degrees. Because it is an academic position, it requires that the person who is teaching the subject matter have academic experience with that subject matter.”
“And not to mention that teachers have pedagogy,” Ward added. “It is not just a science, but an art to be able to teach children to read. We do not believe that anyone, regardless of their education, can be a teacher in a classroom.”
Tina Certain agreed.
“It’s not that I’m against the service that veterans provide to our country,” Certain said. “I just think that to the education profession, we’re lowering the bar on that and minimizing the criteria of what it takes to enter the profession.”
“You can’t just throw a warm body in a classroom. That’s not the answer,” said Barry Dubin, president of the Sarasota County Teachers Association.
However, Gov. Ron DeSantis is optimistic about the new plan:
“We owe the freedoms we enjoy as Americans to our military veterans, and I am focused on ensuring Florida is the best state in the nation for those who have served to find great jobs, start or grow businesses and support their families,” DeSantis said in a statement. “Business is booming in Florida, and employers are looking for the leadership skills, training and teamwork military veterans bring to the workforce.”
Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Reimagine Disaster
A.F. BRANCO | on July 29, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-reimagine-disaster/
Biden and Democrats say “recession” doesn’t actually mean “recession” even with 2 consecutive quarters of an economic downturn.
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Democrats Are Dangerously Close to Changing Laws So Our President Is Elected by Popular Vote
BY: ANDREW MORGAN | JULY 28, 2022
The left’s push for a popular vote for the presidency directly undermines the electoral system established by our Constitution.
ANDREW MORGAN
The left is at it again, and conservatives need to be on high alert. The left has been pushing for a national popular vote to elect the president of the United States for years. Since 2017, 10 more states have either signed the National Popular Vote bill into law or approved the bill in one state legislative chamber. This should be a grave concern because it directly undermines the electoral system established by our Constitution. If not stopped, the American system of presidential elections will be changed potentially forever.
The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. It has been enacted by 15 state legislatures plus Washington, D.C., and passed in 41 legislative chambers in 24 states. For the proposal to become the law of the land, enough states totaling at least 270 electoral votes would be required to enact the law, and states would then commit their electoral votes to the candidate with the most popular votes nationally, regardless of which candidate won at the state level.
The states that have enacted the compact represent 195 electoral votes: Delaware, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Vermont, Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, California, New York, and the District of Columbia. States with passage in one chamber include Arkansas, Arizona, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Nevada, Oklahoma, and Virginia. Successful passage in all of these states represents 283 electoral votes, enough to change the law and make our presidential election decided via popular vote rather than the Electoral College.
Democrats have long been unhappy with the electoral process, unless, of course, their candidate won. When their candidate loses, debate begins anew about how unfair the Electoral College is. The argument is always the same. Since we conduct our elections by democratic process, it makes sense to elect our nation’s executive according to the will of the majority with a voting plurality.
Five times, presidential candidates have won elections without the popular vote: John Quincy Adams (1824), Rutherford B. Hayes (1876), Benjamin Harrison (1888), George W. Bush (2000), and Donald Trump (2016).
Minority and Less Populated Areas Would Lack Representation
The commonly heard sentiment during election cycles is “every vote matters.” However, what is not fair is that if the president is elected based on a plurality, then the minority would not have a chance of having their candidate elected. Only the concerns and interests of more heavily populated areas, such as the East and West coast cities, would be represented. Interests of the minority and less populated areas would naturally be set aside and of little interest to future presidential candidates. Worse, the executive would be beholden and accountable solely to the majority.
This condition was not the intent of our founders. Their intent was to ensure that the nation’s highest executive, as well as the executive branch, represented the interests of all Americans regardless of political affiliation. A future president would need to appeal to those concerned about not just national but also regional issues.
Further, the Electoral College provided a means to disburse and decentralize power. State electors are elected just days before and are unknown until just prior to an election to prevent undue influence to stay true to the people’s votes in their states. Our founders framed it so as to prevent collusion and cabalist (their word) behavior, preclude violence, and thwart involvement of foreign powers.
Cabalism Comes to Light
Following the 2020 election, our founders’ concerns came to light and fruition. Our national elections have been fraught with cabalist behavior, undue influence, numerous forms of cheating, as well as foreign interference. The tyranny they feared came to pass, driven by collusion among the administrative state, the legislative branch, legacy media, Big Tech, and nongovernmental organizations. An independent executive branch separate from the legislature has become an illusion.
In Federalist Paper 68, Alexander Hamilton wrote, “the process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of the president will never fall with a lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with requisite qualifications. Talents for low intrigue and a little arts of popularity may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first owners of a single state, but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole union.” Hamilton would have been appalled today to have witnessed the travesty undermining his sentiment.
So why does all this matter?
An Oppressive Majority
It matters because the idea of a national popular vote is gaining steam and if adopted by enough states, the Electoral College will become irrelevant. Minority voter interests will no longer matter at the national level. Only the whims of the majority will. And the result will be precisely why Socrates opposed a democratic form of government. Once a majority is established, it finds a way to remain permanent, and the majority class will become oppressive to the minority class. There will be no means to overturn the majority, no matter how skewed the majority’s view may be.
The implications for the country are vast and would make the United States just another oppressive tyrannical state. The ultimate reason for the success of the U.S. was that its founders held a belief that we are created and guided by a higher power, and they recognized that men are inherently corruptible. They implemented controls to prevent those with ambitions from achieving outright power over the minority, thus making the U.S. unique among nations.
Left Looks to Crush the Right
The left’s tactics are in high gear, accelerating in an attempt to overwhelm conservatives and Republicans to a tipping point at which the left acquires complete control and the right becomes powerless.
The left’s all-out assault has become abundantly clear since President Joe Biden took office. As soon as Democrats attained the presidency and the narrowest of majorities in the House and Senate, they pressed forward with their agenda, nearly unimpeded had it not been for the likes of Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and perhaps divine intervention.
Whether changing voting laws in its favor, creating crises to circumvent the laws already in place, continually flooding the courts with litigation designed to throw sand in the gears of transparent elections, or changing the electoral process altogether, the left’s efforts to gain and retain control, by any means necessary, will not relent.
In addition to ongoing election integrity efforts across the nation, it is imperative that conservatives push back attempts to advance a national popular vote. It is incumbent upon individual citizens to tell their state representatives that it is not the desire of the people to circumvent the constitutional process for electing our president.
Failure to stop a national popular vote could take generations to reverse.
Andrew Morgan is a former deputy assistant secretary of the Army, a senior executive within the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and a retired U.S. Navy captain. He received his MBA from George Washington University and master’s from National Defense University.
Survey says: You can’t replace dad
By John Stonestreet, Maria Baer
Read more at https://www.christianpost.com/voices/survey-says-you-cant-replace-dad.html/
In 2016, psychologist Dr. Peter Langman compiled biographical data on 56 American school shooters. He found that 82% had grown up in dysfunctional family situations, usually without two biological parents at home. The trend has sadly continued. The shooter in Uvalde, Texas, hadn’t lived with his father in years. The Sandy Hook shooter hadn’t seen his father in the two years leading up to that massacre.
Last month, new research from the Institute for Family Studies demonstrated, once again, how important fathers are, especially for boys. For example, boys growing up without their dads are only half as likely to graduate from college as their peers who live with their dad at home. Strikingly, those numbers remain steady even after controlling for other factors such as race, income, and general IQ. Boys without a dad at home are also almost twice as likely to be “idle” in their late twenties, defined as neither working nor in school, and are significantly more likely to have been arrested or incarcerated by the time they turn 35.
These are only a few of the data points which demonstrate that fatherlessness is one of the most pressing crises our culture is facing. Why doesn’t our culture talk more about this?
One reason is that this crisis intersects other “third rails.” Our culture got to this point via the sexual revolution, which encouraged promiscuity by redefining freedom and prioritizing autonomy over responsibility. When sex outside of marriage becomes normal, it is mostly women who are left on their own to raise the resulting children.
There are other contributing factors as well, many of which were made possible by legislation. Divorce has been largely destigmatized, not in small part by making it legally easier. The legal demand for same-sex “marriage” brought with it the demand for same-sex parenting, which by definition asserts that kids do not need both a mother and a father. Certain forms of assisted reproduction likewise assert that children are less the fruit of a committed marriage than they are a commercial process.
And now here we are, with 32% of American boys growing up in homes without their biological dads. If there’s anything that we should learn from the grim outcomes of this social experiment, it is that dads aren’t replaceable. This was true from creation, but even more so in a fallen world with each of us born with a fallen human nature. We only learn to grow from socially, emotionally, and spiritually immature children into adults so that we can live together in a healthy way by seeing healthy behavior modeled and by having unhealthy behavior corrected.
Scripture passages affirm that mentoring in righteousness requires demonstration, as much or more than just explanation. Christ repeatedly told his followers to “do as He did.” When He washed His disciples’ feet, He offered it as an object lesson: “I give you an example, that you also should do as I did to you.” Paul told believers in Corinth and Ephesus to be “imitators” of him, just as he was an “imitator of Christ.”
In other places, Scripture even points to modeling and mimicry in sex-specific ways. In his letter to Titus, Paul instructed men to be “dignified” and “self-controlled” and to “urge the younger men to be self-controlled.” He also told the older women to “teach what is good” and to “train the younger women” to be “self-controlled,” “pure” and “kind.”
That, of course, is another cultural third rail. We are so desperate to pretend sexual difference isn’t built into our biological reality, we simply cannot abide the suggestion that our genders are critically important in parenting. But the numbers don’t lie. As Dr. Ryan Anderson, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, puts it, “[T]here is no such thing as ‘parenting.’ There is mothering, and there is fathering—children do best with both.”
Christians can challenge the growing public safety crisis that is fatherlessness, and we must start in the Church. We must affirm, in word and in action, that there are men and there are women and that both matter in parenting. We have to de-normalize absent dads, challenge men to take responsibility for their sexual choices and for their children and fill in the gaps whenever and however necessary.
No matter if our technologies and cultural dogmas pretend otherwise, every child has a father. These new statistics show, again, that every child needs their father. We have no right to deprive them of
John Stonestreet serves as president of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. He’s a sought-after author and speaker on areas of faith and culture, theology, worldview, education and apologetics.
Daniel Horowitz Op-ed: McConnell helps Dems pass $280 billion Big Tech corporate welfare bill. Schumer betrays him in return
By DANIEL HOROWITZ | July 28, 2022
Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/op-ed/horowitz-mcconnell-schumer-reconciliation-bill/
Few people in America were following the passage of the $280 billion handout for huge chip manufactures and the 5G industry, but the politics surrounding the bill, as well as the bill itself, perfectly exemplify the “uniparty” dynamic. To begin with, GOP leadership had no problem with this corporate welfare bill and worked together to craft it. However, McConnell promised to hold up the bill unless the Democrats committed to forgoing budget reconciliation, a process through which they can pass liberal priorities without the need for 60 votes. Well, McConnell and 17 other Republican senators eagerly provided the votes for the “chips-plus bill,” and Schumer responded by announcing his plans to pass budget reconciliation to remake our economy!
Leftists love over-taxing and over-regulating certain businesses while granting endless corporate welfare to other industries in order to create transnational monopolies. The semiconductor and 5G industries embody everything conservatives are worried about with the corporate masters – ties to China, privacy concerns, health concerns, outsourcing American jobs, creating monopolies, and funding woke global corporations that hate our values and use the funding as well as the technology against our best interests.
In comes the “chips and science” bill (HR 4346), a $280 billion package for the science and tech cartels that includes $54 billion in five-year grants for manufacturing and design of semiconductors and 5G wireless deployment, plus $24 billion in tax credits for new semiconductor manufacturing facilities through 2026 and funding authorizations to bolster U.S. scientific research. These are some of the wokest and wealthiest companies. Intel, which aggressively lobbied for the bill, already earned $79 billion in revenue last year. Yet 17 Republicans, including Leader McConnell, joined every Democrat sans Bernie Sanders and voted for this earth-shattering and expensive bill with lightning speed.
Even if one agrees there is a need to somehow pick winners and losers, we should have at least secured provisions ensuring that China can’t steal our technology, that the jobs and supply chain remain here in the United States, and that these companies can’t promote wokeness, and we should have addressed oversight issues of privacy and health concerns with 5G. Rather than addressing the insane regulatory burden that has broken our domestic supply chains, this bill will further incentivize and invest in the current globalist system that sells out America to China. Absent large-scale policy reforms, more funding of supposed “American” tech giants is tantamount to funding China. The GOP’s answer to everything we don’t like is to add more spending to it.
To make matters worse, in the final days, the bill added hundreds of pages and hundreds of billions of dollars to fund the broken “science” agencies that should be shuttered. This includes a five-year $102 billion authorization for the National Science Foundation, Commerce Department, and National Institute of Standards and Technology to increase investments, which represents a $52 billion increase in baseline spending of these bloated and unnecessary agencies. It also includes billions of extra funding for “basic energy sciences” and “environmental sciences.” It appears that McConnell and company still “trust the science.”
In other words, even in the minority under a very radical and unpopular Democrat regime, Republicans think that the base spending bills weren’t enough and desire to increase funding for everything that is wrong with government. Republicans will wax poetic today about inflation, yet when it came to the issues that mattered – COVID, Ukraine, and now a massive Big Tech bill – they not only fail to filibuster big budget bills, but they will even vote for new massive spending bills while in the minority. At least in the past they used to be righteous in the minority and screwed conservatives only after winning elections.
Although there are some House Democrats who are at least consistent in their hate for big business and will oppose this corporate welfare, Republicans plan to supply the votes.
This is part of a broader betrayal of passing red-flag laws, flirting with gay marriage, and passing an NDAA funding the woke and broke military that is mandating the shots on soldiers.
To add insult to injury, McConnell originally promised that if Democrats didn’t give up on plans to pass budget reconciliation, he would block passage of the chips bill. A budget reconciliation bill is the only maneuver by which Democrats could attempt to ram through a transcendent policy change without facing a filibuster, assuming they keep every Democrat senator in line. Yet McConnell then votes for the bill, and within hours of its passage yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced plans to pursue a reconciliation resolution.
After months of a stalemate with Senator Joe Manchin, Schumer announced plans to pass a $370 billion “climate and energy” bill, funding the Great Reset, three years of subsidies for the health care cartel under Obamacare, and more handouts for Big Pharma. They are calling it “the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022” because it purports to pay for the spending with tax increases, and somehow that would reduce inflation.
Thus, when Democrats pass that bill next week and all these same McConnell Republicans vote against it, just know that McConnell gave up his leverage and is responsible for that massive tax-and-spend giveaway to woke industries because he agreed to pass another massive corporate welfare bill. Nor do they have any plans to hold up the NDAA or the fiscal year 2023 budget bill when it comes due at the end of September. But fear not. Spend the next few months campaigning for this same party so that none other than a Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is waiting for you as the reward for your hard work.
Reporter uses top Biden adviser’s own words to undercut attempt to redefine recession: ‘What changed?’
By CHRIS ENLOE | July 28, 2022
Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/brian-deese-2008-recession-definition/
The White House was confronted Wednesday over previous comments a top Biden administration adviser made that contradicts the administration’s narrative on “recession.”
On Thursday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis announced the U.S. economy shrank 0.9% in the second quarter of 2022, thus meeting the standard definition of recession, which is two consecutive quarters of GDP contraction. The National Bureau of Economic Research, however, has not officially declared a recession.
In anticipation of the BEA’s report, the White House has been downplaying the accepted definition of recession. According to White House officials, two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth is not the “technical” definition. Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council, strongly reiterated this claim during the White House press briefing on Tuesday.
“Two negative quarters of GDP growth is not the technical definition of recession. It’s not the definition that economists have traditionally relied on,” Deese said. “There is an organization called the National Bureau of Economic Research, and what they do is they look at a broad range of data in deciding whether or not a recession has occurred.”
In 2008, when he worked for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, Deese said the “technical” definition of recession is, in fact, two consecutive quarters of GDP contraction.
“What Senator Clinton has said is that of course economists have a technical definition of recession, which is two consecutive quarters of negative growth,” Deese said in March 2008.
The comments were made as then-President George W. Bush tried to alleviate recessionary fears. At the time and as Deese’s comment reflect, Democrats seized on the moment to emphasize the unfortunate economic circumstances to help Democrats in the 2008 presidential election.
Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy asked White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre about the glaring contradiction on Wednesday, asking why the White House wants to “redefine” the word “recession” while at the same time downplaying the inflation crisis.
“If things are going so great, though, then why is it that White House officials are trying to redefine ‘recession?'” Doocy asked.
When Jean-Pierre claimed the White House is not redefining recession, Doocy pulled out Deese’s 2008 remarks.
“What changed?” Doocy asked. “What’s the difference other than who the president is?”
Jean-Pierre, however, did not directly respond to the question, instead reiterating the Biden administration’s recession narrative.
Ann Coulter Op-ed: Actually, Our Culture Is Better
Commentary by Ann Coulter | Posted: Jul 27, 2022
Read more at https://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2022/07/27/actually-our-culture-is-better—p–n2610901/
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com, WhatDidYouSay.org.
I see the pro-abortion crowd is still bragging about their “10-year-old rape victim,” lamenting that the poor kid had to travel all the way from Ohio to Indiana to get the abortion. They make it sound like a trek from Iran to Iraq in the 13th century.
I don’t expect coastal liberals to know this, but Ohio is next to Indiana. The drive from the child’s home in Columbus, Ohio, to the abortionist in Indianapolis takes 2.5 hours. The cost of the gas was probably a greater trauma for the family than the trip.
But as long as they’re going to keep talking about how hard it is to get an abortion in Ohio, I’m going to keep talking about how hard it is to assimilate the third world to first-world norms about women and children.
Child rape, gang rape, incest — it’s been a long time since we’ve seen much of that in the United States. Of course, there are lots of things we thought had been abolished a hundred years ago that our immigration policies are bringing back.
Indeed, the precise reasons people doubted “10-year-old rape victim” (until we found out the rapist was an illegal immigrant from Guatemala) were:
1) We grew up in America, where such crimes were freakishly rare;
2) We are being systematically lied to about the new cultures being brought in by mass third-world immigration.
In its treatment of women, America is rare even among Western nations.
Toward the end of “Democracy in America,” Alexis de Tocqueville attributes “the unusual prosperity and growing strength” of America to “the superiority of their women.”
This admirable creature, he said, was the product of Protestantism combined with self-government and the spirit of freedom. “Amongst almost all Protestant nations young women are far more the mistresses of their own actions than they are in Catholic countries. … [S]he has scarcely ceased to be a child when she already thinks for herself, speaks with freedom, and acts on her own impulse.”
Cut to: The mother of the 10-year-old rape victim in Ohio adamantly defending her child’s rapist.
Women rallying around the menfolk — who are rapists — is something else that’s new to Americans. But such behavior is disturbingly well-known to police and prosecutors who deal with large immigrant populations.
“Hispanic rape victims are unlikely to report victimization to the police because in their families the male is the head of the household, and women are subordinate to men,” criminal justice professor Shana L. Maier writes in her book “Rape, Victims and Investigations: Experiences and Perceptions of Law Enforcement Officers Responding to Reported Rapes.”
She continues: “Because maintaining the honor of the family is important, Hispanics and Latinos are more likely than other racial/ethnic groups to blame the victim. The victim, not the perpetrator, is blamed for bringing dishonor to the family.”
With the media actively covering up the crimes of immigrants, it may take a while to notice, ladies, but American men were the best you ever had it.
Let’s check in with de Tocqueville again. “[A]lthough a European frequently affects to be the slave of woman,” he wrote, “it may be seen that he never sincerely thinks her his equal. In the United States men seldom compliment women, but they daily show how much they esteem them.”
And he was comparing America to Europe — forget primitive tribesmen.
After your government undertook a massive program to relocate the Hmong people from Laos to Minnesota (and elsewhere in the U.S.), local law enforcement and medical authorities began to notice a striking upsurge in gang rape and forced prostitution. At one St. Paul clinic, a pediatric nurse calculated that Hmong girls were about six times more likely than other victims to have been raped by five or more people.
But their families blame the child rape victims. “In Hmong culture,” the Associated Press matter-of-factly explained, “a girl who loses her virginity before marriage may be looked down upon by her own relatives, even if she is forcibly raped.”
Thus, one Hmong mother’s response to her 12-year-old daughter being gang-raped by at least 10 men (also Hmong, of course) was not to call the police. To the contrary, when the girl limped home after an especially brutal episode, her mother said to her: “You’re just a little slut.”
This is their CULTURE.
Our culture sparkles and gleams, even compared to advanced European democracies, as noted by de Tocqueville. Among the interesting facts about America, he cited was this: “In America a young unmarried woman may, alone and without fear, undertake a long journey.”
Not anymore, ladies! Sorry, but the rich needed cheap labor and the Democrats needed voters.
Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Foreign and Domestic
A.F. BRANCO | on July 28, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-foreign-and-domestic/
Communist China is buying land near Military bases and Biden and the Democrats don’t seem to care.
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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
As Ukrainians Defect to Russia, We Should Ask Whether Our Billions Are Saving Democracy or Aiding Corruption
BY: JONATHAN S. TOBIN | JULY 27, 2022
The more we learn about Ukraine, the less it resembles the Jeffersonian democracy Biden tries to conjure up in his speeches on the subject.
JONATHAN S. TOBIN
VISIT ON TWITTER@JONATHANS_TOBIN
The first lady of Ukraine was in Washington last week to be feted by the Biden administration, Congress, and the corporate press. Olena Zelenska, the attractive and patriotically dressed wife of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was given the Jackie Kennedy/Michelle Obama treatment by fashion columnists while also helping to reinforce the message that Ukraine’s effort to defend itself against Russian aggression is a battle for democracy and the survival of the West. This is an easy story to tell a receptive American audience. Since the war began in February, American sympathy combined with the stiffer-than-expected struggle put up by Ukrainian forces and Zelensky’s deft public relations campaign has reinforced the message that the Kyiv government is a democracy whose defense is essential to Western security.
Yet the question to be posed about this is not whether Russia and Putin are bad but whether Ukraine is the paragon of democracy Biden says it is.
Congress recently passed a $40 billion aid package for Ukraine in May with bipartisan support. Grassroots Republicans and even portions of the Democratic base have been critical of the way Ukraine’s security has come to dictate national priorities. That $40 billion is likely to be only the first installment of a steady flow of aid to pay for the $10 billion per month that the war is costing Kyiv.
That’s what made the appearance of a story about Ukraine in The New York Times this past week, which showed a different side of Zelensky’s government, so significant. The story, titled “Zelenskyy Fires Two Top Law Enforcement Officials,” buried the lead. The Times emphasized the fact that this was the first government shakeup in Kyiv since the war started as well as the fact that one of the two people fired was a boyhood friend of Zelensky. But while that is true, the substance of the story was that the sympathy and support for the Russians among a not insignificant portion of the Ukrainian population and members of the security services has damaged the war effort.
An earlier story in the Times discussed how paranoia about potential Russian spies had spread throughout Ukrainian society. The latest dispatch made clear just how much of an issue this had become. It’s one thing to report about 200,000 spy allegations being submitted to Ukrainian authorities every month. Zelensky’s sacking of security measures made clear how “treason” cases have become something of an obsession for the Ukrainian government.
Even more alarming is the fact that several hundred of these treason investigations involved security personnel. Many Ukrainian officials, including those who were employed by the prosecutor’s office, remained behind in Russian-occupied territory and are now working for Moscow.
Still, that partly explains the large number of Ukrainian personnel helping the Russians. But the way this vast security state has been empowered by the war to turn its malevolent gaze on Ukrainian citizens — whether guilty of sympathy for Moscow or not — is chilling.
Previously, Ukraine was widely acknowledged to be as corrupt as the rest of the former Soviet Union, with a fledgling democratic system that was far from entirely free. Even after Zelensky became president, newspapers that were critical of his government were shut down. Since the war started, journalists have struggled to retain their ability to report freely and fairly.
That the majority of Ukrainians want their country to remain independent is obvious. So is their willingness to fight to prevent their nation from falling under Putin’s thumb. But the ability of the Russians to get so many Ukrainians to sympathize with or aid their assault on Ukraine illustrates that what is going on is, in part, a civil war as well as a foreign invasion.
Yet equally true is the fact that the Ukrainian state that is being defended so bravely is still deeply flawed and possessed of attributes antithetical to democracy. Though some of its problems would be present in any country at war and under direct attack, the more we learn about Ukraine, the less it resembles the Jeffersonian democracy that Biden tries to conjure up in his speeches on the subject.
While sympathy for Ukraine and hostility to Russia is understandable, these are factors that ought to be taken into consideration if the United States is to undertake the kind of financial commitment in this war that is starting to remind us of the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Or, at least, it should if Americans are to be permitted to have a debate about making such a dubious commitment.
Jonathan S. Tobin is a senior contributor to The Federalist, editor in chief of JNS.org, and a columnist for the New York Post. Follow him on Twitter at @jonathans_tobin.
Letting China Purchase US Land Poses An Even Bigger National Security Risk Than You Think
BY: CHUCK DEVORE | JULY 27, 2022
Chinese entities keep purchasing plots of American land, presenting the Chinese military with a strategic advantage should conflict arise.
CHUCK DEVORE
VISIT ON TWITTER@CHUCKDEVORE
Buyers from the People’s Republic of China purchased $6.1 billion in real estate last year, the most of any foreign buyer. Many of these purchases over the past few years have been of farmland or ranchland near U.S. military bases.
Revelations from a groundbreaking exclusive CNN story published on July 23 about telecommunications equipment from China’s Huawei installed in rural America suggest that Chinese land purchases could pose a severe national security threat as well.
CNN chronicles the Chinese government’s more than decade-long effort to establish a massive electronic intelligence and jamming capability in the U.S. adjacent to military installations and in Washington, D.C. Such a system could deliver a crippling electronic Pearl Harbor against American nuclear weapons systems and strategic communications vital to deterring and defeating a military surprise attack. The report details how China’s state-supported telecommunications giants, Huawei and ZTE, sold cell tower equipment and routers, often at a loss, to small, rural telecommunications providers in the heartland. Much of the made-in-China equipment was installed adjacent to the land-based leg of America’s nuclear triad — the 400 Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) — in Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming.
Chinese telecommunications equipment presents four threats:
- real-time communications intelligence,
- real-time imagery intelligence,
- offensive signals jamming,
- and internet attacks.
In the age of software reprogrammable digital electronics, cell tower transmitters and receivers can be remotely reconfigured to listen to nearby military transmissions. Cell tower transmitters can be ordered to broadcast on certain frequencies used by the military, a tactic known as jamming. Similarly, cell towers’ connectivity to the internet could be used to overwhelm or degrade internet service in the early hours of a conflict. Many of the cell towers installed cameras in recent years to provide real-time traffic and weather conditions. Many of these cameras also monitor traffic around sensitive U.S. military installations.
The FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into this threat was so sensitive that senior policymakers in the White House and Congress weren’t told until 2019. Soon after, the Federal Communications Commission issued a rule banning small telecoms from using certain kinds of Chinese manufactured equipment. In 2020, Congress appropriated $1.9 billion to rip out and replace about 24,000 pieces of Huawei and ZTE equipment in rural America. But none of it has yet been removed, and carriers insist that the federal government is $3 billion short of making them whole. Chinese telecommunications equipment remains a ticking timebomb, with resistance to its removal ranging from economic justifications to cries of xenophobia.
How did we get here? The Chinese Communist Party practices strategic mercantilism, fostering key technologies with dual-use civilian and military applications while driving competing industries in other nations out of business.
In the 1970s, the world’s two largest manufacturers of telecommunications gear were headquartered in the U.S.: Western Electric and ITT. Less than two dozen years ago, the two largest were U.S.-based Lucent and Canada’s Nortel. America saw its manufacturing dominance slip from producing one-third of the world’s telecom equipment in 1997 to barely more than one-tenth today. The People’s Republic of China played a key role in that decline. In 1979, China declared its telecommunications industry as strategic and stated that it required “absolute control.” In 1982, China imported 100 percent of its telecommunications equipment. By 2000, it was self-sufficient, importing no foreign equipment.
China’s path to dominance was simple: It leveraged Western demand for quarterly profits by telling foreign suppliers that they had to manufacture the products they sold to China in joint ventures with Chinese firms. China then built its supply chain to provide the inputs for these joint ventures as well as to steal the intellectual property with the goal of eventually being able to make high-end equipment. The result is that today, U.S. telecommunications service providers rely almost entirely on Chinese or European suppliers—with China routinely offering cheaper prices.
The Importance of Real Estate
Voluntarily purchasing problematic Chinese equipment is one thing, but what happens when China controls real estate near military bases or important government facilities?
An odd 2017 deal illustrates the importance of strategic real estate. That year, China offered to pay the entire $100 million cost to build the National China Garden on 12 acres at the U.S. National Arboretum in Washington, D.C. Concerns voiced by American counterintelligence officials resulted in the project being rejected just before construction was due to begin. Among their misgivings: The proposed pagoda on one of D.C.’s highest points would be built from materials shipped to the U.S. in diplomatic pouches, meaning no import inspections.
This Chinese project attracted attention because it was on federal land in the nation’s capital. On the other hand, purchases of land in private transactions frequently escape attention until after the fact.
The Fufeng Group intends to build a corn-milling plant on 300 acres it just purchased in Grand Forks, North Dakota, 16 miles from the U.S. Air Force’s Air Combat Command base.
But the $2.6 million land purchase is a good thing, some might argue. The Chinese firm plans to invest another $700 million in the area and generate 200 jobs—besides, America has a trade deficit with China, and those dollars must go somewhere, so why not see them reinvested in the U.S.? Further, it’s not like the Chinese can pack up American land and take it back to China with them. And, while some express concern about China owning agricultural land (Chinese interests now own 192,000 agricultural acres worth almost $2 billion), even if China were to decide to divert all production to China or cease agricultural operations, production could easily be restarted.
The CCP Problem
But what most Americans don’t know is that every Chinese company with 50 or more employees must have a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official embedded in it. This CCP political officer is a looming presence in any firm hailing from a nation with no rule of law other than what CCP officials say it is. Thus, while the Fufeng Group likely has legitimate business purposes for investing in Grand Forks, so too does the CCP have strategic military purposes for using Fufeng’s North Dakota base for its own purposes.
In April, U.S. Air Force Major Jeremy Fox wrote an unofficial memo highlighting concerns that the Grand Forks perch was well sited to intercept military communications between “unmanned air systems” and “space-based assets.” A USAF spokesman subsequently downplayed Major Fox’s concerns as his “personal assessment of potential vulnerabilities.”
Similar concerns have been expressed about the purchase of a 130,000-acre ranch on the border with Mexico near Laughlin Air Force Base in Del Rio, Texas. The site is home to a wind turbine project that, due to its connection with the Texas grid, could be used to disrupt the state’s electric system. Further, the land—which features a large airstrip, as do many Texas ranches—could be used to coordinate activities with the transnational drug cartels across the border.
In both cases, in North Dakota and in Texas—and on any other large agricultural or industrial facility—equipment might be positioned for purposes other than purely commercial reasons. And, since Chinese nationals and companies must obey the CCP, if they don’t cooperate, they risk losing everything up to and including their freedom and their lives.
FBI Director Christopher Wray told CNN that the FBI opens a new China counterintelligence investigation every 12 hours with about 2,000 active investigations, excluding cyber theft, which is a criminal matter.
Retired U.S. Navy Capt. James “Kimo” Fanell was the chief of intelligence for the Pacific Fleet and notes that large parcels of land or industrial sites could host signals intelligence or electronic warfare equipment such as jammers. He observed, “While our Customs inspectors are hardworking people, they’re overloaded, especially today with the Biden administration’s de facto open border policies. The idea that a strategic adversary could buy land near U.S. military bases does not pass the commonsense test.” He added, “We’ve got to do better as a nation to defend our citizens from these kinds of obvious threats.”
Given the sluggishness of the American response to the grave danger posed by communist China—a response slowed over fears of being accused of racism or by economic arguments made by well-funded lobbyists for Chinese interests or U.S. multinationals—it doesn’t take much to imagine the varied nature of attacks we might see on the homeland during the first few days of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
The time for talk is over; we need action.
Chuck DeVore is Chief National Initiatives Officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a former California legislator, special assistant for foreign affairs in the Reagan-era Pentagon, and a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army (retired) Reserve. He’s the author of two books, “The Texas Model: Prosperity in the Lone Star State and Lessons for America,” and “China Attacks,” a novel.
At This Manhattan Middle School School, Sixth-Graders Are Asked to Surveil Friends and Family for ‘Microaggressions’
By Aaron Sibarium | July 27, 2022
A New York City public school encouraged students as young as 10 years old to keep a list of all the “microaggressions” they witnessed, both at school and in their own families, according to materials from the school’s curriculum reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. The same students were also asked to list their gender identity—”cisgender,” “nonbinary,” or “trans”—as well as their sexual orientation on a graded worksheet.
The sixth-grade humanities curriculum from Lower Manhattan Community Middle School, where just 31 percent of students are white, required students to read Tiffany Jewell’s This Book Is Anti-Racist, one of only five books assigned for the 2021-2022 year. The book contains 20 lessons on “how to wake up, take action, and do the work”—including the work of confronting the police, which Jewell suggests white students can do without ending up “in jail or harmed.”
“If you are a Black, Brown, or Indigenous Person of the Global Majority, you will need to decide how each outcome could end for you,” Jewell writes in a chapter called “Choosing My Path.” “White people, this is not something you need to do because you are at the center of the system.”
From Tiffany Jewell’s ‘This Book Is Anti-Racist’
The book also asks students to surveil their friends and family for racist behavior. “Grab your notebook,” one “activity” instructs readers. “Look and listen for the microaggressions around you. Write them down and note your observations.” Another activity asks students how “folx” in their families “resisted” or “contributed to racism,” defined as the “systemic misuse and abuse of power by institutions.”
The curriculum, which went into effect August 2021, came as parents across New York City were mobilizing against critical race theory in public schools—and as education officials across the country were denying that there was any such thing.
“Critical race theory is not taught in elementary schools,” Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, asserted in July 2021. Parents “are bullying teachers and trying to stop us from teaching students accurate history.”
One month earlier, New York Regents chancellor Lester Young stated that critical race theory “is not our theory of action” and assured parents that “we are not preparing young people to be activists.”
Jewell’s book belies that assurance. “We will work together, in solidarity, to disrupt racism and become anti-racist accomplices,” the preface reads. “There are many moments to pause in this book so you can check in with yourself and grow into your activism.”
The curriculum could spell legal trouble for the school, which is already under investigation for separating seventh and eight-graders into racial affinity groups. That practice prompted a civil rights complaint in December from the watchdog group Parents Defending Education; on July 13, the Department of Education announced it would investigate the middle school over the complaint.
“It’s astonishing that administrators at Lower Manhattan Community seem determined to create a racially hostile educational environment on top of the civil rights investigation that was just opened,” said Nicole Neily, the president of Parents Defending Education. “Parents who were once proud of the school’s academic performance compared to other New York City public schools are now concerned—justifiably so—about the school’s increasing fixation on race.”
Those concerns come amid steep enrollment declines—and budget cuts—in New York City’s public schools. With enrollment down 8 percent since 2020, schools have lost $215 million in funding this year alone, forcing widespread layoffs and larger class sizes.
Divisive curricula like the one at Lower Manhattan Community School have exacerbated that exodus. One parent told the Free Beacon that their child would not be returning to the middle school this fall on account of an assignment that required sixth-graders to disclose their “social identities”—including their sexual orientation—on a worksheet. Though students did not have to “write something for every category,” instructors collected the worksheet for a grade.
Such lessons aren’t the product of a few school administrators run amok but reflect the race-conscious worldview of the New York City Department of Education. In June 2020, then-executive superintendent of Manhattan public schools Marisol Rosales hosted a panel on dismantling “systemic racism in our schools,” which held up Lower Manhattan Community School’s “mission statement on race” as a model for the entire school system.
“To undo the legacy of racism and oppression in this country that impacts our school community,” the mission statement reads, Lower Manhattan Community Schools works to instill “anti-racist beliefs and practices.”
The school’s sixth-grade humanities curriculum is a microcosm of what that education looks like in practice. Three of its five units concern “identity,” with Jewell’s book listed as a “key text” for unit one. The “social identities” worksheet was part of a broader lesson on “the dominant culture,” which consists of “people who are white, middle class, Christian and cisgender.”
Whoever does not fit into this “box,” Jewell writes, is “part of what’s called the ‘subordinate culture.’” Her description of that culture is exhaustive, albeit studded with solecisms: “Folx included in the ‘subordinate culture,’ include Black, Brown, indigenous People of Color of the Global Majority, queer, transgender, and nonbinary folx, and cisgender women, youth, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, atheist, and non-Christian folx, neurodiverse folx, folx living with disabilities, those living in poverty, and more.”
“The people who want to talk about racism all the time are the racists,” said Maud Maron, who served as an elected representative for parents in the district where Lower Manhattan Community School is located. “The people who suffer are the kids who get cheated out of a wholesome school experience and hours of learning that should be focused on academics instead of race indoctrination.”
Lower Manhattan Community School did not respond to a request for comment.
The focus on race extended to the seventh-grade social studies curriculum—ostensibly devoted to early American history—which used “anti-racist” guru Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning as its main textbook, according to a syllabus for the 2021-2022 school year reviewed by the Free Beacon.
These curricula do not seem to have soothed racial tensions at Lower Manhattan Community School, which is 41 percent Asian, 15 percent Hispanic, and 7 percent black.
A group of parents and administrators in April began planning a “restorative justice circle” to address alleged incidents of racism that had taken place over the school year, according to emails reviewed by the Free Beacon. The incidents included a black student calling a South Asian student “Indian Boy,” an Asian student touching a black student’s hair, and a “rumor” that a white student “used the N-word.”
The school eventually canceled the circle after a parent objected that it would “violate students’ privacy” and “possibly put current students at risk”—and after parents started to litigate the incidents over email, replicating the racial catfighting that had consumed the classroom.
One parent questioned the wisdom of discussing the transgressions of Asian students at a time when anti-Asian hate crimes were on the rise. It didn’t go over well.
“African Americans have been facing race-based violence for 500 years in this country, and still face it every day,” another parent responded. “So, I’d ask you to please be sensitive to that fact during discussions and emails with our group.”
‘Trans women are women’: Comically, the Women’s March is all-in on radical leftist gender ideology
By ALEX NITZBERG | July 26, 2022
The Women’s March claims that the word “women” includes transgender women. A transgender woman is a biological man who identifies as a woman.
“We got some transphobes BIG mad the other day so let us spell it out for you: ‘Women’ is a term that encompasses cis & trans women. When we talk about ‘people who can give birth,’ it’s because those people aren’t all women! They’re girls, trans men, & non-binary ppl,” Women’s March tweeted on Tuesday.
“Some of y’all really struggle with the concept of ‘assigned sex’ vs ‘gender identity’ and it shows!!” the group added. “Women’s March is committed to creating equality for women & a feminist future for all. We fight for rights that primarily (but not exclusively!) impact women. We fight for a world where ALL women are safe from gender-based violence, discrimination, and hate.”
The Women’s March received significant pushback after it declared in a tweet last week that “Trans women are women.”
“The point of tweets like this is to demoralize actual feminists, so that we stop fighting for women and girls. Don’t let it demoralize you,” Abigail Shrier tweeted last week in response to the Women’s March’s claim.
“Misinformation,” Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon tweeted.
“No, they aren’t. There are massive differences between women and trans women. We can be respectful to trans people while not abandoning reality,” Megyn Kelly tweeted.
“If the point of this slogan is to reject treating ‘trans women’ and ‘women’ as separate or distinct categories of people, then the slogan undermines itself, because it refers to them as separate categories… thus implying some distinction. Otherwise, they’d say ‘women are women'” Michael Tracey commented.
The Women’s March’s tweets reflect the dogmas of radical leftist gender ideology.
Vice President Kamala Harris did her part to promote the ideology this week by announcing her pronouns at the beginning of a roundtable event.
Country music star John Rich’s new anti-woke song tells leftists to ‘stick your progress where the sun don’t shine’ — and it hits #1 on iTunes in just hours
By DAVE URBANSKI | July 26, 2022
Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/john-rich-progress-anti-woke/
Country star John Rich — one half of the popular duo Big & Rich — penned a decidedly anti-woke song he dubbed “Progress” that rails against left-wing politics and culture and stands up for traditional American values. However, Rich told Just the News that he foresaw a problem getting a song that tells leftists to “stick your progress where the sun don’t shine” played on the radio and distributed to the masses. Mainly because the music industry also leans left.
So, Rich did an end-around on Friday, bypassing the music industry’s gatekeepers and instead releasing “Progress” on Truth Social — the platform started by former President Donald Trump — and on the Rumble video platform.
In just a few hours, “Progress” jumped to number one on iTunes, Just the News said, besting the likes of Billie Eilish and Lizzo and Beyonce. A quick glance Tuesday at PopVortex revealed that “Progress” is indeed the top song on the American iTunes charts.
“Here I am with no record label, no publisher, no marketing deal,” Rich told Just the News. “I just got a song that speaks to a lot of people, and Truth and Rumble pushed it out there. And man, I’m really proud of what we did today.”
A lyric in “Progress” takes aim at the forces that conspire to “shut down our voices,” and Rich explained to the outlet that he’s “talking about Twitter and YouTube and Facebook. And I thought, ‘You know what? I’m gonna reach out to Truth Social and reach out to Rumble because they still allow free speech over there.’ Why would I launch this song on the platforms that I’m railing against in the lyrics?”
Rich added to Just the News that his launch experiment is “bypassing this machine that they’ve built, going right around the machine, going right to the people. It means that if you bring the right content, and you have people like Truth and Rumble that will get that message to your core audience, you can beat the machine that’s been put in place to keep people like me shut down.”
He also told the outlet that “the problem with country radio” isn’t the DJs or others at country music stations; instead “it’s the people way up the food chain that run the conglomerates that have bought up 90% of all of our radio stations … a big [contingent] of them … do not like anybody bucking their woke system.”
Still, Rich added to Just the News that “there’s a few good ones in there. And when I say ‘good,’ I mean, you know, ‘lean conservative.’ They want free space; they want artists to be heard.”
The author of “Progress” revealed to the outlet how his new song was born.
“I’m watching what I consider to be the dismantling of our country at a lot of different levels,” Rich told Just the News. “And when you sit back and look at it, the vast majority of it’s being perpetuated on us under the banner of ‘progress.’ Like in the name of progress we’re going to send gasoline through the roof so you have to buy an electric car. In the name of progress, we’re going to let anybody and everybody into our country, and if that means we get overrun with fentanyl and every other bad thing, well, so be it. Because that’s progressive: You need to be open-minded and open borders in the name of progress. They target our kids in the name of progress; they do all these things that are actually the opposite of that. They’re regressive. They’re not constructive, they’re destructive.”
Here are the lyrics:
There’s a hole in this country where its heart used to be
And Old Glory’s divided on fire in the street
They say Building Back Better will make America great
If that’s a wave of the future, all I’ve got to say
(chorus) Stick your progress where the sun don’t shine
Keep your big mess away from me and mine
If you leave us alone, well we’d all be just fine
Stick your progress where the sun don’t shine
They invite the whole world to come live in our land
And leave our countrymen dying in Afghanistan
They say let go of Jesus, let government save
And you can have back your freedom if you do what we say
(chorus)
They shut down our pipelines, and they shut down our voices
They shut down our Main Streets, and they shut down our choices
They bent us all over, but it’s all over now
‘Cause we’ve figured it out, we ain’t backing down
(chorus)
Here’s Rich playing “Progress” live on on “Fox & Friends” and explaining its origins:
Fox & Friends : John Rich’s ‘non-woke’ song hits number one on iTunes youtu.be
Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Airhead of State
A.F. BRANCO | on July 27, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-airhead-of-state/
Biden keeps on pumping the same old failed radical left policies while the economy goes into a recession.
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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
Barry Goldwater’s 1980 GOP Convention Speech Resonates Amid Biden’s Failing Presidency
BY: JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON | JULY 26, 2022
Forty-two years ago, Goldwater correctly diagnosed the problems afflicting America — many of them worse today than they were back then.
JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON
VISIT ON TWITTER@JOHNDDAVIDSON
Forty-two years ago this month, the Republican National Convention in Detroit nominated Ronald Reagan for president, a move that would not only forever change the GOP but alter the course of American history. Reagan’s acceptance speech from the 1980 convention is understandably the famous one, but another convention speech is also worthy of remembrance today, when so much of what ailed America in the Jimmy Carter era seems to be back with a vengeance.
That would be Sen. Barry Goldwater’s speech. Goldwater, the unlikely Republican nominee in 1964, was entering the final stretch of his long political career. In the 16 years since his failed run for the White House, he had become a kind of elder statesman of the conservative wing of the GOP that was then coming into power. He understood clearly the problems facing the country, and what to do about them. Above all, he told the truth.
Received at the convention hall to a loud, extended ovation, Goldwater launched into a speech that now reads like a commentary on the Biden administration. He opened with a “recital of the tragic miscalculations of the president and his administration.”
“Those economic decisions that have given us the highest rate of inflation in our history. Those foreign policy decisions which have cost us the respect of our enemies and destroyed the confidence of our friends throughout the world. And those military decisions which have reduced us to the rank of a second-rate power.”
These problems, Goldwater explained, are not the fault of the American people, who did not forget who they are or abandon the principles of the Declaration of Independence. “And yet this beloved country of ours stands in great peril,” he said. “Our fellow countrymen are distraught, confused, alarmed, and uncertain. Fear and distress abound.”
As in 1980, so it is today. The flurry of recent comparisons in the corporate press between President Joe Biden and former President Jimmy Carter attest to the parallels. Never mind that most of these pieces are facile attempts to defend the Biden administration by arguing that, really, Carter wasn’t that bad, and the failures of his presidency weren’t his fault. The comparison is nevertheless apt.
The fact is, America in 2022 is beset with problems that look a lot like the problems of the Carter era: record-high inflation, gas prices at historic highs, rising crime, multiple foreign policy crises, flagging confidence in the American military, and economic recession hanging in the air. Like Carter, Biden is unequal to the task. Not only does he seem incapable of fixing these problems, he doesn’t even seem to understand them (and his administration refuses to acknowledge them).
Goldwater, who saw all these things playing out during the Carter administration, knew what was needed: “It is my solemn belief that we must order a dramatic change in the course this country is headed.”
The rising distrust of the government — as well-deserved in 1980 as it is today — must change to confidence in it, he said. There must be a change from uncertainty and weakness to strength and trust. We must “turn our backs on the false promises of something for nothing” and the “perpetual care and eternal bliss” of a “super-federal state,” and reaffirm our belief in a Constitution that “guarantees individual freedom, and demands individual responsibility.”
Not surprisingly, given the ongoing Iran hostage crisis and rising tensions with the Soviet Union, Goldwater emphasized the need for a strong foreign policy and a peerless military. Taking a shot directly at Carter over the Iran debacle, he said, “If our leaders had displayed the guts and the courage that America is noted for, no country in this world would ever have taken hostages from us.”
Instead, America was projecting weakness: “Other nations in the free world, dismayed and confused by the aimless, inconsistent, contradictory foreign policy of the United States, have lost confidence in our leadership.”
Almost every charge Goldwater leveled at the Carter administration and the Washington establishment in 1980 could be leveled at Biden and the political establishment today. What, after all, is Biden’s foreign policy if not aimless, inconsistent, and contradictory? After the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last fall, Biden has embarked on a muddled and ineffectual response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with an open-ended commitment of financial aid and weapons that has depleted our resources and distracted from the only genuine major threat to American national security: communist China.
Even if younger Americans today have no memory of the Carter years, their dissatisfaction with Biden after less than two years in office mirrors the dissatisfaction with Carter near the end of his single term in office. Recent polling showed Biden with a record low 36 percent approval rating, which is around where Carter’s approval rating was for the last 10 months of his presidency.
Goldwater ended his convention speech on a note of warning that America was in grave danger. “We are Republicans,” he said. “We love our republic. And our job, ladies and gentlemen, is to defend it — and let me tell you, save it.”
Perhaps more than any other figure at that time, Goldwater understood the peril of utopians getting control of government, and that taking power back from them was the only way to save the republic.
John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.
The Left’s Response to Failure Is to Redefine It as Success
BY: ELLE REYNOLDS | JULY 26, 2022
Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/07/26/the-lefts-response-to-failure-is-to-redefine-it-as-success/
‘Recession’ is far from the first concept the left has simply redefined to deflect the consequences of their failed policies and ideas.
ELLE REYNOLDS
VISIT ON TWITTER@_ETREYNOLDS
In preparation for the close of the year’s second economic quarter, the White House Council of Economic Advisers has already started the spin: We’re not in a recession if we just redefine what a recession is.
“While some maintain that two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP constitute a recession, that is neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle,” the supposedly nonpartisan group said in a blog post on Thursday.
It’s doubtful the verbal smoke and mirrors will persuade the average Americans whose grocery bills keep growing as fast as their gas tanks empty. A recession is a sustained downturn in economic activity, and many Americans can feel it without knowing what the Q2 numbers are. But it’s far from the first concept the left has simply redefined to deflect the consequences of their failed policies and ideas.
One of their favorite words to redefine, apparently as “full and unchallenged political control,” is democracy. When actual democratic processes are at work — such as when an elected majority votes not to pass a pet piece of legislation, or when issues such as abortion law are left to elected representatives of the people at the state level — leftists scream their favorite catchphrase and call it a “threat to democracy.” They’ve levied that smear at everything from our bicameral legislature to the Supreme Court to the other party in our two-party system. It’s obvious they’re not really talking about democracy in any honest sense of the word. When democracy is a threat to their power, it simply gets redefined.
Another word that’s undergone a 180-degree redefinition is racism. No longer is it considered racist to treat someone differently based on his or her skin color, and not racist to value all human beings equally. Instead, if you’re not promoting theories that “remedy … past discrimination [with] present discrimination,” as critical race theorist Ibram X. Kendi suggests, you are clearly a racist according to the left’s new dictionary. Do you believe in meritocracy? Racist. Think people are responsible for their own choices, and it’s neither possible nor beneficial for the government to dole out equivalent outcomes to everyone by force? Doubly racist. The new liturgy says that true equality lies in teaching some children that they’re part of a hopelessly oppressive system and other children that they’re hopelessly oppressed.
On the subject of pitting people against each other, the term “vaccine” has been ridiculously redefined to cover for the incompetence of the people who profit from them. After the shot that was promised to protect people from Covid transmission and infection failed to ward off either, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention simply changed the definition of “vaccine” to fit the narrative. “A product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease” was quietly altered to “a preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.” Barely a week later, Merriam-Webster followed suit by changing the definition of “anti-vaxxer” from someone who opposes vaccines to someone who doesn’t believe the government should mandate Covid shots.
Just last week, as part of the trans-crazed campaign to redefine what a woman is, Merriam-Webster added “having a gender identity that is the opposite of male” to its definition of “female.” Categories such as “men” and “women” that are based in biological reality don’t suit the agenda that seeks to abolish those realities from minds and bodies. So rather than advocate their agenda within the bounds of reality, the left simply attempts to redefine reality itself. It’s apparent in the push to call women by the objectifying terms “pregnant persons,” “menstruating people,” etc. We saw it when then-Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson told Congress she couldn’t define what a woman is, and it’s obvious in the attempts to put confused men in women’s prisons, shelters, and bathrooms. The reality of womanhood is in the way, so it’s being redefined out of existence.
And while abortion advocates lately have been willing to defend the act of killing a baby in the womb even with the understanding that it takes a human life, for years they’ve pushed their agenda by redefining an unborn baby as a “clump of cells” or some other dehumanizing description.
On any of those topics and more, leftists and their allies in Big Tech also persistently redefine any dissenting opinions or perspectives as disinformation, using that disingenuous label to erase opposition from channels of discourse.
Of course, many people who hear them prattle about “disinformation,” “birthing persons,” “anti-racism,” “threats to democracy,” and their host of other buzzwords know those words are nonsense. We can tell, as George Orwell wrote in 1946, that “political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.”
But, as he noted, “the worst thing one can do with words is to surrender them.” The danger is in allowing these redefinitions of reality to be said, unchallenged, until enough people forget they could ever be challenged at all.
Elle Reynolds is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. You can follow her work on Twitter at @_etreynolds.
FBI’s False Labeling of Biden Laptop as Disinformation Is Even Worse Than It Seems. Here’s Why
BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JULY 26, 2022
This scandal is no longer just about the Biden family; it’s about every member of the law enforcement and intelligence communities who put our country at risk by failing to do their jobs.
MARGOT CLEVELAND
VISIT ON TWITTER@PROFMJCLEVELAND
FBI whistleblowers claim that agents opened a sham investigation into Hunter Biden to brand reliable and verifiable derogatory evidence as “disinformation,” according to an explosive news release issued yesterday by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.
If true, beyond exposing the FBI’s role in running cover for the Biden family, the whistleblowers’ claims prove significant for a second reason: By failing to thoroughly vet the evidence in its possession related to Hunter Biden — which included the hard drive for the MacBook Hunter had abandoned at a repair shop — the intelligence community ignored a momentous national security threat, namely that the Russians potentially possessed a second Hunter Biden laptop.
Late Monday, Grassley issued a news release citing “multiple FBI whistleblowers, including those in senior positions,” who raised “the alarm about tampering by senior FBI and Justice Department officials in politically sensitive investigations,” including “investigative activity involving derogatory information on Hunter Biden’s financial and foreign business activities.” According to the Iowa Republican, the whistleblowers alleged that Washington Field Office Assistant Special Agent in Charge Timothy “Thibault and other FBI officials sought to falsely portray as disinformation evidence acquired from multiple sources that provided the FBI derogatory information related to Hunter Biden’s financial and foreign business activities, even though some of that information had already been or could be verified.”
The news release added that “in August of 2020, FBI supervisory intelligence analyst Brian Auten opened an assessment, which was used by a team of agents at FBI headquarters to improperly discredit and falsely claim that derogatory information about Biden’s activities was disinformation, causing investigative activity and sourcing to be shut down.” “The FBI headquarters team allegedly placed their assessment findings in a restricted access subfolder, effectively flagging sources and derogatory evidence related to Hunter Biden as disinformation while shielding the justification for such findings from scrutiny,” according to Grassley.
The Iowa senator claimed that “Thibault also reportedly ordered the closure of a stream of information related to Hunter Biden and sought to improperly mark the matter within FBI systems in a way that would prevent it from being re-opened in the future.” “The FBI headquarters team allegedly claimed that reporting from the stream was at risk of disinformation,” but the whistleblowers told Grassley, “that all of the information obtained through that stream was already verified or verifiable.”
The FBI whistleblowers’ charges, if accurate, are devastating and mean that at a time that Hunter Biden was already reportedly under investigation by the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office, rather than work with the agents already investigating then-candidate Joe Biden’s son, FBI headquarters initiated its own “assessment.” Then, according to the whistleblowers, agents improperly shut down sources, falsely framed evidence as disinformation, and hid the reasoning for that determination from other FBI agents behind restricted areas.
The press release also suggests that the FBI’s “assessment” served to frame the investigation Grassley and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., were conducting into Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealing as tainted by Russian disinformation. As part of that investigation, in May 2020, “Senate Republicans issued a subpoena seeking documents from the younger Biden and asked for information related to more than two dozen entities, including Burisma,” which was the Ukrainian energy company that paid Hunter nearly $1 million a year to sit on its board.
With the Trump-Biden presidential contest in full force, Grassley and Johnson’s investigation into Hunter prompted pushback from Democrats, with Democrat members of the Gang of Eight sending a letter and classified addendum in July 2020 to FBI Director Christopher Wray “specifically citing the Johnson-Grassley probe into Hunter Biden as reason for an urgent briefing for Congress about foreign ‘disinformation.’”
The following month, Democrat Sens. Gary Peters of Michigan and Ron Wyden of Oregon wrote Grassley and Johnson and requested that members of the Senate Homeland Security and Finance committees, which they chaired, “receive a briefing from the FBI’s foreign influence task force related to their ongoing Biden investigations.”
According to an August 5, 2020, Washington Post article, “the Democrats have requested the member briefing for months, and the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies have previously briefed committee staff on possible foreign disinformation.” The FBI later briefed both Grassley and Johnson on August 6, 2020, but according to the senators, that briefing was both “unsolicited and unnecessary” and failed to provide any new information to the senators or any specific allegations that they had received “disinformation” as part of their Hunter Biden investigation.
Given that FBI supervisory intelligence analyst Brian Auten, according to whistleblowers, opened his assessment into Hunter in August, the whistleblowers’ allegations raise serious questions concerning whether Democrats pressured the FBI into launching an investigation into Hunter as a pretext to provide the desired “disinformation briefing.”
Further, in April of 2021, someone leaked the fact that the FBI had briefed Grassley and Johnson on August 6, 2020, with the Washington Post running a story painting the senators as reckless in their investigation into Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings by suggesting they “ignored FBI warnings and thus may have been manipulated by the Kremlin.” As the Wall Street Journal reported at the time, it seems possible that “the FBI set up two Members of Congress for political attack under the guise of a ‘defensive briefing.’”
The whistleblowers’ accusations then, when coupled with the media coverage, suggest that an agent from FBI headquarters opened an assessment to provide cover to Hunter Biden, to eliminate source trails for the investigation into then-candidate Joe Biden’s son, and to taint the legitimate inquiry into Hunter Biden’s business dealings. That scandal, however, represents but half the issue because the whistleblowers’ statements, if true, suggest the assessment of Hunter was a sham. And as a sham, the agents would not vet the evidence available to them, which would have included the MacBook laptop Hunter had abandoned at a repair shop in Delaware.
The FBI seized that laptop in December of 2019, after being alerted to its existence in October. At that time, FBI agents were reportedly told that in addition to pornography, the computer had information “dealing with foreign interests, a pay-for-play scheme linked to the former administration, [and] lots of foreign money.”
What the FBI did after seizing the laptop in December of 2019 is unknown. However, given that the FBI was reportedly told it contained “a pay-for-play scheme linked to the former administration, [and] lots of foreign money,” any legitimate investigation would have involved reviewing the laptop for information relevant to Grassley and Johnson’s investigations. And had the FBI reviewed the laptop, agents would have discovered a video recording capturing Hunter Biden saying that in 2018, another laptop went missing when he was “partying in Las Vegas,” and that Hunter believed it was stolen by a group of Russians.
The video then showed a prostitute asking Hunter if he worried the Russian thieves would try to “blackmail” him. “Yeah, in some way, yeah,” Hunter replied, noting his father is “running for president,” and that “I talk about it all the time.” Hunter had also noted that the computer had “tons” of compromising videos on it.
But it was not just the compromising videos of Hunter of concern, but the financial information likely on that laptop that could implicate his father in the pay-to-play scandal. If that information were in the hands of “the Russians,” as Hunter believed, the national security risk was huge and demanded the intelligence community conduct a defensive briefing of Joe Biden.
Instead, it appears from the whistleblowers’ comments that a non-investigation took place, with legitimate sources and evidence falsely categorized as disinformation, and then rather than provide Biden a defensive briefing, the senators received one.
This scandal is no longer just about the Biden family; it is about every member of the law enforcement and intelligence communities who put our country at risk by failing to do their jobs.
Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
‘Who Is Running This Country?’: Charlamagne Goes After Biden, Dems on ‘The View’
By NICOLE SILVERIO, MEDIA REPORTER | July 25, 2022
Read more at https://dailycaller.com/2022/07/25/charlemagne-tha-god-biden-the-view/
Radio host Charlamagne Tha God criticized President Joe Biden’s leadership and Democrats on “The View” Monday.
Charlamagne interviewed Vice President Kamala Harris in December 2021, asking her whether Biden or Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin is the “real president.” The vice president answered Biden is the president and told him not to “talk like a Republican.” Monday, co-host Joy Behar asked the rapper about the interview.
“What did she say?” the co-host asked.
“Nothing,” he responded. “She didn’t really give an answer. But as you can see, it seems that President Manchin is currently running this country. In hindsight, people thought I was being harsh by asking that question, but now it’s like well, damn, who is running this country? Is it President Biden or Manchin?”
Behar said Manchin has a lot of power for one person, then accused the system of being dysfunctional. She asked if he is “frustrated” by how Democrats are “countering the Republicans.”
“Yes, I feel like Democrats have tried every political strategy except for courage,” he said. “There are four things that need to be done to preserve democracy. One is, get rid of the filibuster so you can properly legislate.”
WATCH:
“Manchin won’t have it,” Behar replied. “And [Democratic Arizona Sen.] Kyrsten Sinema, too. So, it’s not his [Biden’s] fault.”
Charlamagne called on Congress to pack the Supreme Court, pass a federal elections takeover bill and prosecute those involved in the January 6 Capitol riot. (RELATED: ‘The View’ Co-Hosts Blames ‘DINOs’ In Congress For Roe v. Wade Overturn)
“It takes courage to vote to get rid of the filibuster, but it also takes courage to call out people like Joe Manchin, to call out people like Kyrsten Sinema and let us, the general public, know that people are blocking progress in this party,” he continued.
He credited Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for calling out their colleagues.
Manchin and Sinema have come under fire for opposing the abolition of the filibuster to pass two pieces of legislation aimed at weakening election security measures, and a recent bill intended to codify Roe v. Wade. Sinema argued abolishing the filibuster will lead to greater division during a fiery speech in January.
“The 2013 decision by Senate Democrats to eliminate the 60-vote threshold for most judicial and presidential nominations led directly to a response in 2017 by Senate Republicans, who eliminated the threshold for Supreme Court nominees,” she said. “These shortsighted actions by both parties have led to our current American judiciary and Supreme Court, which as I stand here today is considering questions regarding fundamental rights Americans have enjoyed for decades.”
Manchin has expressed opposition and voted against Biden’s Build Back Better plan, urged for the reinstatement of the Keystone XL Pipeline, and expressed concerns about the administration’s calls for the American people to purchase electric vehicles to combat rising gas prices. He was the sole Senate Democrat to vote against the Women’s Health Protection Act, which aimed to legalize third trimester abortion in all 50 states.
LA school district encourages teachers to reject gender ‘binary,’ embrace LGBT ideology
By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter | Monday, July 25, 2022
Read more at https://www.christianpost.com/news/los-angeles-school-district-encourages-teachers-to-reject-gender-binary.html/
One of the largest school districts in the United States has urged teachers to embrace LGBT ideology denouncing the gender “binary,” according to a new report.
Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank Manhattan Institute, shared documents he obtained from the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Human Relations, Diversity, and Equity Department on Twitter Wednesday. LAUSD is the largest school district in California, serving more than 500,000 students.
“Los Angeles Unified School District encourages kindergartners to experiment with non-binary pronouns, trains teachers to subvert ‘mainstream white cis-heteropatriarchy society,’ and promotes sexual identities such as ‘trans,’ ‘pansexual,’ ‘two-spirit,’ and ‘genderqueer,'” Rufo tweeted.
The outspoken critic of critical race theory and LGBT ideology being incorporated into public schools provided screenshots of a “treasure trove of documents from the district’s Human Relations, Diversity, and Equity department, which has created an entire infrastructure to translate the basic tenets of academic Queer Theory into K-12 pedagogy.”
“The programming includes a wide range of conferences, presentations, curricula, teacher-training programs, adult-driven ‘gender and sexuality’ clubs, and school-sponsored protests,” Rufo wrote in an article for City Journal.
The Christian Post reached out to LAUSD for comment. A response is pending.
Among the documents Rufo shared online are LAUSD’s “Queer and Trans-Affirming School Calendar” titled “Queer All School Year.” One PowerPoint presentation focused on “Queering Culture & Race.” The PowerPoint has been removed from the LAUSD’s Human Relations, Diversity, and Equity Department’s website.
A slide from an October 2021 professional development workshop discussing “breaking the binary in education” asserted that “our language is binary due to the society around us.” The stated purpose of the workshop was to provide a “start for educators to look at how they can shift their thinking, language, and approach to LGBTQ+ topics in the classroom.” The workshop was presented by a fifth grade magnet school teacher whose pronouns are “they/them.”
Other workshops at the same conference featured a panel discussion with queer seventh-grade students to “produce counter narratives against the master narrative of mainstream white cis-heteropatriarchy society that seeks to erase and oppress our lived experiences.” They included a list of resources for trans-identified students, including “trans-affirming clothing.”
Another workshop advised teachers to use “non-gendered expressions” and abandon the use of the phrases “boys and girls,” “ladies and gentlemen” and “guys.”
SCOOP: Los Angeles Unified School District encourages kindergartners to experiment with non-binary pronouns, trains teachers to subvert “mainstream white cis-heteropatriarchy society,” and promotes sexual identities such as “trans,” “pansexual,” “two-spirit,” and “genderqueer.”🧵
I have obtained a trove of documents from the district’s Human Relations, Diversity, and Equity department, which has created an entire infrastructure to translate the basic tenets of academic Queer Theory into K-12 pedagogy. The narrative follows the standard academic slop: white, cisgender, heterosexual men have built a repressive social structure, divided the world into the false binary of man and woman, and used this myth to oppress racial and sexual minorities.
In a conference last fall, the district hosted presentations on “breaking the [gender] binary,” understanding “what your queer middle schooler wants you to know,” and producing “counter narratives against the master narrative of mainstream white cis-heteropatriarchy society.”
In another training, the district encouraged teachers to “avoid gendered expressions” such as “boys and girls” and “ladies and gentlemen.” The district also warned teachers that they might need to work against black families, who are guilty of “homophobia and transphobia.”
Los Angeles Unified has gone all-in on “trans-affirming” programming, encouraging kindergartners to experiment with non-binary gender identities and organizing “trans & gender nonbinary” sexuality clubs for middle school students.
The district has adopted the policy that schools must use the “names and pronouns” selected by the student and keep them a secret from families. In other words, teachers can facilitate a child’s gender and sexual transition without notifying parents.
A school district policy issued in 2019 proclaimed, “Students shall be addressed by the name and pronoun that corresponds to their gender identity asserted at school without obtaining a court order, changing their pupil records or obtaining parent/legal guardian permission.”
The document clarified that “if school personnel are unsure how a student wants to be addressed in communications to home or in conferences with parents/legal guardians/educational rights holders, they may privately ask the student how they want to be referred to when communicating with parents/legal guardians.”
A chart obtained by Rufo listed the “privileged social groups” within individual “social identity categories,” along with the “border social groups” and the “disadvantaged social groups.”
The chart identified “white people,” Anglo-Saxons, citizens, males, gender-conforming men and women, heterosexuals, rich people, the able-bodied and mainstream Christians as privileged social groups. The document classified “People of Color,” females, trans-identified people, LGBT individuals and non-Christians as “disadvantaged social groups.”
Rufo cited the chart as an example of the narrative that “white, cisgender, heterosexual men have built a repressive social structure, divided the world into the false binary of man and woman, and used this myth to oppress racial and sexual minorities.”
As of Sunday, all but one of the links on the Office of Human Relations, Diversity & Equity’s “Advisory Lessons” webpage redirect to a page informing visitors that “this page has moved.” The only document remaining is a PowerPoint presentation outlining “10 Ways to Talk About Sensitive Issues in the News.” Two of the PowerPoint documents removed from the website include “Critical Race Theory, Racism and K-12 Education” and “Say Gay: Protect LGBTQ+ Futures.”
The department has a separate webpage devoted to lessons on “Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression.”
While most of the documents have been removed, a presentation on the meaning of the term “2 Spirit” remains. A lengthy glossary of LGBT terminology defined the phrase as an “umbrella term traditionally within Native American communities to recognize individuals who possess qualities or fulfill roles of both feminine and masculine genders.”
The PowerPoint contended that “European colonizers” imposed a “binary, European understanding of gender” on Western civilization. Additionally, it stated that “colonizers imposed homophobia, gender binaries and misogyny among other abuses towards the Indigenous nations” when they first arrived in what is now the U.S.
Another presentation available on the website discussed “names and pronouns” and included advisories to “ask [people] for their pronouns when meeting someone new, correct people when they use the wrong pronouns, use the name and pronouns they ask you to use and apologize and correct yourself if you get it wrong.”
An LAUSD spokesperson told The Washington Examiner that the district “supports and respects the diversity of our students and families, which includes providing safe and affirming learning environments.”
Rufo’s reporting comes three years after 43.9% of students in the district met or exceeded standards in the 2019 Smarter Balanced assessments’ state English testing, which constitutes part of the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress.
That same year, 33.47% of students in the district met or exceeded the standards in the state math testing.
When compared to all the school districts in the state, LAUSD scored in the bottom 50% in both categories. SchoolDigger ranked the district 1,029th out of 1,496 school districts in California. LAUSD is not the only major U.S. school district to embrace LGBT ideology amid mediocre student performance on state assessments.
Rufo previously shared footage of professional development training teachers in the School District of Philadelphia were encouraged to attend. The training consisted of sexually explicit workshops, including one where the speaker informed attendees that “I have tried and touched many d—s” and showcased prosthetic penises.
The most recent data from the school district reveals that 22% of Philadelphia public school students received a proficient or advanced score on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment math test. Additionally, 33% of third-graders scored proficient or advanced on the PSSA ELA test, and 36% of students in grades four through eight received scores of proficient or higher on the same test. SchoolDigger ranked the School District of Philadelphia 473rd out of 579 school districts in Pennsylvania.
A poll commissioned by the American Federation of Teachers showed most Americans are “dissatisfied” with how schools teach students about issues related to sexual orientation, gender identity and race. The survey indicated that 58% of respondents living in battleground states were “dissatisfied” with “the way students are taught about issues related to sexual preference and gender identity,” while just 23% were “satisfied.” At the same time, 60% of those surveyed described themselves as “dissatisfied” with “the way students are taught about racial issues and the role of race in America,” while 27% were “satisfied.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
GODLESS PARTY: Joe Biden and Democrats Spend Millions in Unconstitutional Program to Push Atheism in Foreign Countries
By Jim Hoft | Published July 24, 2022
Read more at https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/07/godless-party-joe-biden-democrats-spend-millions-unconstitutional-program-push-atheism-foreign-countries/
Your tax dollars at work!
The Joe Biden regime is spending millions in taxpayer dollars to spread atheism overseas. This program that favors atheism over Christianity or other belief systems is unconstitutional.
The United States was built on Judeo-Christian principles. Democrats are moving at warp speed to erase that important piece of our American history.
Democrats have morphed into a godless and demonic party afraid of God and in support of the vilest behaviors and beliefs.
FOX News reported:
Several House Republicans are demanding answers from the Biden administration regarding a grant program the Republicans say will “promote atheism worldwide.”
Republican Study Committee (RSC) chairman Jim Banks of Indiana led the letter with 14 of his GOP colleagues to President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken regarding the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor’s (DRL) grant program promoting atheism and “humanism.”
“The Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) was officially titled ‘DRL FY20 IRF Promoting and Defending Religious Freedom Inclusive of Atheist, Humanist, Non-Practicing and Non-Affiliated Individuals,’” Banks and the Republicans wrote.
“It announced a ‘competitive’ process that would award grants of up to $500,000 to organizations committed to the practice and spread of atheism and humanism, namely in South/Central Asia and in the Middle East/North Africa,” they continued.
The Republicans pointed out that atheism and “humanism” are both “official belief systems” protected under the First Amendment’s right to religious freedom and said they would “like to know what other United States government programs supported with appropriated funds are being used either to encourage, inculcate, or to disparage any official belief system – atheist, humanist, Christian, Muslim, or otherwise.”
Here is a copy of the GOP letter today Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.
Rep. Jim Banks letter to Pr… by Houston Keene
Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016.
Chinese Government-Backed Student Groups Pose ‘Greatest Threat to American Colleges’: REPORT
By PHILIP LENCZYCKI, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER | July 25, 2022
Chinese government-backed student groups pose a clear and present danger to U.S. colleges, a report from The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal said Monday.
Chinese Students and Scholars Associations (CSSA) — “campus organizations for Chinese students studying abroad” — have coordinated with the Chinese government to engage in intimidation, censorship and surveillance while maintaining “furtive financial practices,” the center’s report claims. Many of the approximately 150 CSSAs across the country “receive guidance” and funding from the Chinese government, according to a 2018 congressional commission.
Some CSSAs have been “active in carrying out overseas Chinese work consistent with Beijing’s United Front,” according to the congressional commission. The United Front Work Department (UFWD) is a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) agency whose members engage in propaganda, espionage and physical violence, according to the State Department.
“CSSAs pose what is arguably the greatest threat to American colleges,” the report states, citing multiple instances in which CSSA chapters have worked to advance Beijing’s agenda on U.S. campuses. (RELATED: After Being Outed By The State Department, China’s US College Infiltration Operation Just Rebranded: REPORT)
One instance involved members from the University of California San Diego’s CSSA chapter who condemned the Dalai Lama’s 2017 commencement speech by issuing a statement and publishing an op-ed in protest, Time reported. Along with Uyghurs, Falun Gong practitioners, pro-democracy advocates and Taiwan independence activists, the CCP considers Tibetans one of the “Five Poisonous Groups” that supposedly threaten China, according to a 2005 congressional hearing.
Similarly, the University of Washington’s CSSA protested a screening of “Letter From Masanjia” — a film about Chinese slave labor — and “made a scene” in 2019, Leon Lee, a Peabody Award-winning director, told the Daily Caller News Foundation in February.
CSSA chapters have also reportedly engaged in surveillance activities against Chinese students, Politico reported. For example, a University of California Berkeley graduate student affiliated with the school’s CSSA was reportedly working with China’s secret police to report on other Chinese students, an anonymous former official told Politico. (RELATED: Math Professor Convicted Of Hiding China Ties To Get Taxpayer Funding)
Exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, The Dalai Lama, speaks to reporters during a news conference in Seattle April 13, 2008. (REUTERS/Robert Sorbo)
Many CSSA chapters reportedly receive funding from the Chinese government, the report states, citing a Foreign Policy piece that determined chapters frequently take money from Chinese embassies and consulates. However, the funding provided to any given CSSA varies and “not all CSSA members are comfortable” with Beijing’s influence, according to the congressional commission.
The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal filed public records requests to six University of North Carolina (UNC) schools — University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, UNC Greensboro, UNC Pembroke, UNC Charlotte, East Carolina University and North Carolina State University — concerning their CSSA chapters, yet reportedly received no “insightful information” regarding their finances or budgets.
Meanwhile, many of the nation’s Confucius Institutes — Chinese language and culture centers — recently rebranded and then reportedly rekindled relationships with U.S. colleges after the Department of State designated the Chinese government-backed organizations a “foreign mission” in August 2020, according to a National Association of Scholars report in June.
The Chinese Embassy, the State Department, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Greensboro, Pembroke, Charlotte, East Carolina University, North Carolina State University and their related CSSA chapters did not respond immediately to the DCNF’s request for comment.
COMMENTARY
Watch: Police Put in Horrifying Situation as 4-Year-Old Opens Fire While Dad Is Being Arrested
By Richard Bledsoe | July 22, 2022
Read more at https://www.westernjournal.com/watch-police-put-horrifying-situation-4-year-old-opens-fire-dad-arrested/
Police are often placed in situations where they have to make life-or-death decisions in an instant.
Thanks to the attitudes of the establishment media, the results of those consequential choices usually only get publicized if police can be blamed for making the wrong call.
However, now dramatic body cam footage was released where police successfully handled a dangerous situation in which a 4-year-old boy used his father’s gun to open fire on the officers. They were able to disarm the child before anyone got hurt.
Multiple versions of the body cam recordings were shared in a YouTube video. Watch:
ABC4 in Utah linked highlights from the videos and summarized the events that took place on February 21. The police were summoned when “employees reported that a man brandished a gun in the drive-thru after his order was incorrect.”
Sadaat Johnson, 27, was in the McDonald’s drive-thru with two children in the car, a 4-year-old and a 3-year-old.
Johnson did not comply with police instructions, and the situation escalated until officers were forced to pull Johnson from the vehicle.
The video does not show what happened next in the car. While the police were making the arrest of Johnson, the 4-year-old boy picked up the gun. An officer saw the weapon and shouted “Gun!”
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ABC4 reported, “The officer used his hand to sweep the gun away and the gun went off, hitting the upper part of the McDonald’s building. The officer then yelled at the person inside of the car to drop the gun, and after looking inside the car, realized that it was a small child.”
The children can be heard crying as they exit the car. The officers ask “Are you all right, kid?” and try to reassure them: “It’s okay, it’s okay.”
The discharge may have been accidental. However as reported in the New York Post, “The investigation showed that Johnson then ‘told the child to shoot at the police,’ authorities said. It was not clear exactly when he gave the order and it was not caught in the bodycam clip.”
“The boy — who was taken into protective custody — said he shot at the cops because ‘he wanted his daddy back,’ according to court records obtained by ABC4.”
Johnson also explained to the authorities “this wasn’t the first time his 4-year-old child had gotten his hands on a gun.”
Johnson ended up pleading guilty to two third-degree felonies, child abuse or neglect and aggravated assault. Johnson was sentenced to 120 days in jail, three years of probation and courses on anger management and parenting. He can no longer own guns.
A huge contributing factor to this near-disaster was Johnson’s disrespect and disregard for the police. This attitude leads to more danger in police interactions, despite the absurd progressive activist campaign to defund the police based on claims that it’s police presence that starts the problems.
This is not to say law enforcement does not need some reform. But it needs to be reform that puts police back into serving and protecting communities, rather than abusing citizens on behalf of the political class.
Police should also question even their own self-serving agendas. The Utah body cam footage was in stark contrast to footage from the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas. There, the cams caught almost 400 law enforcement personnel unable to handle a lone shooter for almost an hour, while kids died.
In the Utah case though, it is a testament to God’s mercy and the police that no one was killed or injured through the careless abuse of firearms. There could have been causalities of officers, kids or both.
The trouble was caused due to a series of bad decisions and actions by Sadaat Johnson, as much as some want to blame the gun or the cops instead.
Contributor, Commentary
Richard Bledsoe is an author and internationally exhibiting artist. His writings on culture and politics have been featured in The Masculinist, Instapundit and American Thinker. You can view more of his work at Remodernamerica.com.
In The Wake of Roe’s Demise, Democrats Are Doing All They Can to Thwart Democracy
BY: JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON | JULY 22, 2022
Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/07/22/in-the-wake-of-roes-demise-democrats-are-doing-all-they-can-to-thwart-democracy/
Democrats say they love democracy, but when it produces laws they oppose, they’ll use all their power to undermine it.
JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON
VISIT ON TWITTER@JOHNDDAVIDSON
Democrats love to talk about democracy — mostly about how it’s under threat from Republicans and “Christian nationalists” and anyone who opposes their agenda. But at least on a rhetorical level, they seem to cherish democracy and rightly think that a government of the people, by the people is the surest safeguard against tyranny.
In practice, though, they hate democracy and will use every tool at their disposal to subvert and destroy it. Hardly a day goes by that Democrats don’t proclaim as much by their actions. Just look at their response to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade last month, which triggered laws in more than a dozen states banning or placing new restrictions on abortion. Voters in those states elected the people who passed these new laws, which in many cases are broadly popular. By overturning Roe, the court breathed new life into the democratic process, returning an issue to the American people that an earlier Supreme Court had snatched away from them.
But Democrats don’t really want democracy when it comes to abortion, which they consider sacrosanct. They have no qualms about protecting it from regulations by state lawmakers through the raw exercise of federal executive power, if need be. This week, Attorney General Merrick Garland threatened to sue states that have outlawed or restricted abortion since the end of Roe, and he also said the Justice Department would try to get a judge to toss a Texas lawsuit that would block newly issued rules from the Biden administration’s U.S. Department of Health and Human Services forcing doctors to perform abortions in emergency rooms.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Garland’s DOJ said last week it had launched a special task force to “evaluate state laws that hinder women’s ability to seek abortions in other states where the procedure remains legal or that ban federally approved medication that terminates a pregnancy.” The task force will also “oppose state efforts to penalize federal employees” who perform abortions “authorized by federal law.”
What could that mean? Well, take a look at the lawsuit Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton just filed against HHS. The administration is trying to use the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) to force ER doctors to perform abortions, even if it contravenes state laws outlawing the procedure. EMTALA was passed in 1986 as a way to prevent “patient dumping,” or turning away people who couldn’t pay, and it requires hospitals that receive Medicare money (which today is all of them) to treat people who show up at an ER in need of emergency treatment.
The Texas lawsuit argues the Biden administration is trying to “use federal law to transform every emergency room in the country into a walk-in abortion clinic,” and that “EMTALA does not authorize — and has never authorized — the federal government to compel healthcare providers to perform abortions.”
Garland and HHS claim that EMTALA preempts state law, but it’s unclear what that means in the context of the new HHS rules. If a state legislature passed a law saying that emergency rooms are prohibited from treating patients who have no health insurance, then yes, EMTALA would preempt that.
But as Paxton’s lawsuit rightly notes, the law says nothing about abortion, nor does it say anything about which specific treatments a hospital ER must administer. It only states that Medicare-participating hospitals have to provide “stabilizing treatment” for “emergency medical conditions,” and it specifically defines both of those terms in the statute.
For Democrats, though, laws passed by representatives of the people don’t carry as much weight as rule by administrative fiat. On July 11, the Biden administration’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued “guidance” purportedly reminding hospitals of their obligations under EMTALA. But the guidance was much more than a reminder, and it was accompanied by a letter from HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra that amounted to an abortion mandate for hospitals, asserting powers under EMTALA that simply don’t exist anywhere in federal law.
First, Becerra’s letter claims that if an ER doctor determines that “abortion is the stabilizing treatment necessary to resolve [an emergency medical condition as defined by EMTALA], the physician must provide that treatment.”
But this is nothing more than a cheap word game. Abortion isn’t a “stabilizing treatment,” and nowhere in federal law is it construed as such. Becerra is conflating Democrats’ loose rhetoric about abortion — that it’s “reproductive healthcare” or “women’s health” — with the straightforward reality of the federal EMTALA statute, which says nothing about abortion and, to the contrary, specifically includes a mention of an “emergency medical condition” as one that threatens the life of an unborn child.
Second, Becerra’s false claim that EMTALA preempts state abortion laws is contradicted by the plain language of the law itself, which says it doesn’t preempt state law “except to the extent that the requirement directly conflicts with a requirement” of EMTALA. But abortion is not a requirement of EMTALA and doesn’t even fit the law’s definition of “stabilizing treatment” for an “emergency medical condition.”
In a decent country, Texas would easily win this lawsuit — and the Justice Department would never step in to try to get it thrown out. But Democrats are committed to subverting the democratic process at both the state and federal level in order to preserve some shred of their abortion regime. They’re trying to preempt state laws they don’t like by twisting the meaning of federal laws that don’t have anything to say about abortion.
Remember that the next time you hear President Biden or some other leading Democrat talk about “threats to democracy.” They don’t care about democracy, they care about power. And they will use every ounce of it they have to advance their policies — the will of the people be damned.
John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.
Accomplice in Murder of Retired Officer David Dorn Given Probation and Released on Time Served — As Jan. 6 Political Protesters Rot in Prison for Walking Inside US Capitol
By Jim Hoft | Published July 22, 2022
Read more at https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/07/accomplice-murder-retired-officer-david-dorn-given-probation-released-time-served-jan-6-protesters-rot-prison-walking-inside-us-capitol/
Retired St. Louis Police Captain David Dorn was murdered in June 2020 outside of Lee’s Pawn and Jewelry in North St. Louis City.
The looters shot Dorn then broke into the store and looted it as dozens of cars drove by on Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive.
David Dorn was 77-years-old when he was gunned down by looters.
He lay outside the store bleeding as his death was captured on Facebook Live.
Earlier this week Stephan Cannon was found guilty of killing retired Officer Dorn.
Security camera footage of killer and accomplices of David Dorn from inside looted pawn shop.
A second suspect, Mark Jackson, had his charges suspended this week. Jackson had been charged with second-degree murder but had his charges dropped. He was put on probation and released on time served. Mark Jackson testified against Cannon.
BrightGram reported.
A key witness whose testimony led to a conviction for a man accused of killing retired St. Louis Captain David Dorn in June 2020 had his own charges in the crime suspended in favor of probation.
The very next day, prosecutors with the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office and a city judge agreed to commute the sentence for Mark Jackson, who testified against Cannon during the three-day trial.
Jackson pleaded guilty on Thursday to first-degree robbery and first-degree burglary and received a 15-year suspended execution of sentence, with five years of probation. He was credited with time served and released.
“I think the sentence is fair and just. I hope he can turn his life around, like he says he wants to,” Ann Dorn, Capt. Dorn’s widow, said in court Thursday.
Jackson had also been charged with second-degree murder, stealing $750 or more, and three counts of armed criminal action. The state dropped those charges.
Also happening this week —
A Washington DC jury convicted Trump supporter Matthew Bledsoe on the felony charge of “obstruction of an official proceeding” and four other misdemeanor charges. Bledsoe now faces up to 20 years in prison — more time than many rapists and killers.
We are now at a point in America where killers walk free and Trump supporters are given over a decade in prison for walking inside the US Capitol on January 6.
Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016.
Mississippi Man and J-6 Political Prisoner Faces MORE THAN 20 YEARS IN PRISON After Conviction of Made-Up Felony Charge of “Obstruction of Official Proceeding” and Four MISDEMEANORS!
By Jim Hoft | Published July 21, 2022
Read more at https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/07/mississippi-man-j-6-political-prisoner-faces-20-years-prison-conviction-made-felony-charge-obstruction-official-proceeding-four-misdemeanors/
Matthew Bledsoe on January 6th. Bledsoe was found guilty by a jury of his ‘peers’ this week. Many of those ‘peers’ admitted they could not remain “impartial”.
THE END OF AMERICA–
** Insurrectionist David Hogg interrupted and obstructed an official US House hearing on Wednesday in Washington DC. Hogg shut down the hearing while he screamed at Republican lawmakers about racism and guns. David was not arrested for obstructing this official proceeding.
** On Monday all charges were dropped against CBS employees for uber-leftist Colbert’s late-night show who were arrested after trespassing after hours into the US Capitol and then harassing and threatening Republican lawmakers. Colbert’s crew also harassed and mocked family members of January 6th political prisoners who have been held in prison for over a year without trial. The Biden-appointed US Attorney Matthew Graves, who let the Colbert crew walk scot-free, is the same attorney persecuting Trump supporters and January 6 defendants.
** On Thursday a Washington DC jury convicted Trump supporter Matthew Bledsoe on the felony charge of “obstruction of an official proceeding” and four other misdemeanor charges. Bledsoe now faces up to 20 years in prison — more time than many rapists and killers.
Matthew Bledsoe spent 22 minutes inside the US capitol “parading” and “remaining in restricted grounds.”
Now he will learn his lesson.
Matthew Bledsoe faces 20 years in prison for parading in US Capitol after police officers welcomed the vast majority of the protesters into the building.
WATN Memphis reported:
An Olive Branch, Mississippi, man was found guilty Thursday on charges he faced for the Jan. 6, 2021, breach at the U.S. Capitol.
The U.S. Department of Justice said Matthew Bledsoe, 38, formerly of Cordova, Tennessee, was convicted of felony charge – obstruction of an official proceeding, and four misdemeanor counts – entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a Capitol Building; disorderly conduct in a Capitol Building, and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol Building.
Prosecutors said in the days following the November 2020 election, Bledsoe began posting about the results on social media. They said on Jan. 6, 2021, he went to a rally near the Ellipse, then headed to the Capitol, where he “illegally entered the grounds shortly after 2:13 p.m.” They said Bledsoe scaled a wall on the Upper Northwest Terrace and went into the Capitol building through a fire door at the Senate Wing.
According to prosecutors, Bledsoe yelled, “In the Capitol. This is our house. We pay for this s—. Where’s those pieces of s—at?” They said he then climbed a statue and was outside the corridor to the House Chamber near the Speaker’s Lobby. They said he spent about 22 minutes inside.
Prosecutors said Bledsoe returned within two hours, lingering near the East Rotunda Doors as law enforcement was securing the building and grounds.
They said Bledsoe continued to post on social media and message family and friends about what happened on Jan. 6. He was arrested days later on Jan. 13, 2021.
Bledsoe is set to be sentenced on Oct. 21, 2022. He faces up to 20 years in prison and fines on the felony charge, and up to three years in prison and fines for the misdemeanor charges.
Since Jan. 6, 2021, the Department of Justice said more than 850 people have been arrested in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the Capitol breach. More than 260 have been charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement.
If you are a leftist, you can burn down cities and destroy billions of dollars in property and face no punishment.
If you are a Trump supporter, you will face 20 years in prison for “obstructing an official proceeding” and parading in the US Capitol – something leftists do nearly every day without fear of persecution.
** IF ANY FAMILY MEMBER has a GiveSendGo account set up for Matthew please let us know.
Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016.
Navy veteran grabs his rifle after spotting prowlers outside his home — then a furious shootout erupts: ‘I knew I had to act’
By DAVE URBANSKI | July 22, 2022
Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/navy-veteran-shootout-with-prowler/
Navy veteran Whitfield Smith grabbed his rifle after spotting prowlers outside his Georgia home in the middle of the night last week — and a furious shootout erupted after he headed to his driveway to get a closer look.
Much of the scary encounter was captured on surveillance video.
WAGA-TV characterized Smith’s neighborhood near Jonesboro — about 30 minutes south of Atlanta — as “quiet.”
It was anything but in the early morning hours of July 11 after Smith saw potential trouble outside his home, the station said.
“As I keep looking at the Ring camera I noticed a young man running from the neighbor’s yard across my yard and into the street to meet up with two other gentlemen,” he told the station.
Then things got scarier for Smith, as one of the individuals headed down his driveway.
“I can see from the camera he’s hunched down wearing a gray hoodie, and he has a firearm in his hand. He tries to get into the BMW in the driveway. The door’s locked,” Smith recounted to WAGA.
“My first thought was to protect my house and protect my property,” Smith told WAGA. “I just wanted to get the intruders away.”
“I grab my rifle, and I head outside,” he told the station.
Smith was shirtless and wearing only flip-flops and pajama pants in that moment — but the main thing on his mind was protecting his wife who was hiding inside their home, WAGA noted.
“I knew I had to act,” Smith added, according to Inside Edition.
Surveillance video shows Smith approaching his driveway — he later added to WAGA that the armed individual was using his truck as a shield — and then a shootout erupted.
Smith is then seen quickly backpedaling toward his home, kicking off his flip-flops, and heading back inside.
He soon returned to the driveway with a shirt and shoes on.
“I could hear them trying to get away,” he added, according to Inside Edition. “They’re jumping over fences.”
While Smith was uninjured, he added to the station he fears he would be dead if it weren’t for his BMW shielding him from the nearly two dozen bullets fired in his direction.
“I don’t want to die at home. I survived Afghanistan and everywhere else. To die at home? In my own yard?” an incredulous Smith — who’s also a father — reflected to WAGA.
“This was coordinated,” he told WAGA of the incident. “They were working together as a team to get this done.”
The station added that a gun which was inside Smith’s truck was stolen, and that those who know anything about what took place can contact Clayton County police anonymously.
EXCLUSIVE: Sen. Ted Cruz Introduces Legislation to Redirect Unspent COVID-Relief Funds to School Security
By HENRY RODGERS, SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT | July 22, 2022
Read more at https://dailycaller.com/2022/07/22/ted-cruz-legislation-prevent-school-based-violence-covid-money-randy-weber/
Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz introduced legislation Friday that would use COVID-19 education-related funding to improve the security at schools across the U.S. The legislation, first obtained by the Daily Caller, is titled the Protect Our Children’s Schools Act and is a Senate companion to legislation introduced by Republican Texas Rep. Randy Weber. The bill would allow schools to use unspent previously appropriated Federal COVID-19 education-related funding to improve school security. The bill requires the Department of Education to make all un-obligated federal COVID relief funds that are available to the secretary of education for school safety purposes. As of May 2022, states have not spent the majority of their relief funding. Cruz’s legislation would try to improve school security in K-12 elementary and secondary schools.
“Far too many atrocities have been committed at schools in Texas and across our nation. Increasing school safety is of paramount importance. The excess and unused monies given to schools to address the coronavirus should be used to keep our kids safe from monsters in their communities, and our bill would make sure local schools can use these funds to address their specific security needs,” Cruz told the Daily Caller before introducing the legislation.
“It’s teachers and local education officials who know best what their schools need, and how to use funds to keep our kids safe when they go to school,” Cruz added. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Rep. Roger Williams Calls On Pelosi To Pass School Security Bill, Forget ‘Partisan Gun-Control Package’)
READ THE BILL HERE:
https://www.scribd.com/embeds/583674164/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-xDR09IqgY4YiX0eQcE5W
(DAILY CALLER OBTAINED) — … by Henry Rodgers
“My district knows too well that evil people do evil things, and we know the importance of protecting our children in schools. As we approach a new school year, our children should feel safe and secure when they walk through the doors, and that’s why I introduced a commonsense bill to harden schools,” Weber told the Daily Caller before Cruz introduced his legislation. (RELATED: Ted Cruz Introduces Legislation To Send Illegal Immigrants To Martha’s Vineyard, Other ‘Democrat-Led Communities’)
“I appreciate Senator Cruz introducing the Senate version of the Protect Our Children’s Schools Act,” Weber added.
China Just Turbo-Charged Its Tech Sector. Is The Biden Admin to Blame?
By MICAELA BURROW, CONTRIBUTOR | July 21, 2022
Read more at https://dailycaller.com/2022/07/21/china-turbo-charged-tech-sector-biden-blame/
A major Chinese semiconductor producer secretly developed advanced chip technology, and the U.S. Commerce Department’s lax export control policies may be the culprit, according to Republican lawmakers.
Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) shipped a Bitcoin-mining semiconductor to technology analysis firm TechInsights, who found that the chip’s sophistication had caught up to those produced by firms like Intel in a Tuesday report. The U.S. has banned sales of equipment that can be used to manufacture these more advanced semiconductors, 10 nanometers and below, since 2020, according to Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS).
The U.S. blacklisted SMIC in 2020 due to “evidence of activities between SMIC and entities of concern in the Chinese military industrial complex,” according to the text of the rule. However, Republican lawmakers have alleged the Commerce Department’s “ineffective” export control licensing policies allowed firms associated with the Chinese military, including SMIC, access to U.S. technology.
“A serious U.S. export control policy should be predicated on denying foreign adversaries’ efforts to supplant American economic, technological, and military leadership,” Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Republican Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas wrote in a letter to the Biden administration in March.
BIS denied less than 1% of license applications to SMIC during a six-month period that spanned the Trump and Biden administrations, approving applications that together with Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei totaled $100 billion, McCaul said at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing Wednesday.
“Despite an ongoing genocide and systematic program to divert private sector innovations to its military, dual use technology exports to China received little to no scrutiny,” said McCaul.
TechInsights found that the chip’s transistor width reached 7 nanometers, two generations more advanced than SMIC’s established 14nm product. A narrower transistor width allows the chip to process data at greater speeds, according to Bloomberg.
“This is a groundbreaking discovery because the U.S. Department of Commerce was supposed to be restricting export licenses for any equipment which can be used on technologies more advanced than 14nm,” Dylan Patel, chief analyst at the SemiAnalysis blog, wrote. “Of course, the Department of Commerce handed out export licenses like candy.”
China’s MinerVa Semiconductor Corp., a customer of SMIC, advertises a 7nm chip, although Bloomberg could not establish SMIC as the manufacturer.
Lawmakers have raised concerns that lax export controls at the BIS have allowed Chinese entities to access advanced U.S. technology. (RELATED: Big Tech Lobbies Congress To Weaken ‘Guardrails’ Against Chinese Business: REPORT)
“The Biden Administration will continue working to grow and strengthen our cooperation with allies and partners to ensure effective controls on semiconductor production,” a Commerce Department spokesperson told Bloomberg.
U.S. and U.K. spy chiefs issued an unprecedented joint warning against Chinese espionage activities, including attempts to steal and exploit U.S. technology, on July 6.
SMIC, the Department of Commerce, the International Trade Administration and BIS did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
The Left’s Trans Agenda Is All About Erasing the Past to Control the Future
BY: JORDAN BOYD | JULY 21, 2022
Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/07/21/the-lefts-trans-agenda-is-all-about-erasing-the-past-to-control-the-future/
The left doesn’t just want you to deny biology in the present. They want you to ignore that it was ever valued as reality in the past.
JORDAN BOYD
VISIT ON TWITTER@JORDANBOYDTX
Radical gender idealists recently announced they are unhappy with the “current standards in forensic human identification” because those policies “do a disservice to people who do not clearly fit the gender binary.” Instead of simply discovering and classifying the past using contextual clues in human remains, including sex as determined by biological features, there’s a new academic push to project the sexual climate of today on history and offer “a gender-expansive approach to human identification.”
We should have guessed that the same progressives who want to wipe the Founding Fathers’ legacy off the face of the planet would also want you to believe that skeletons from ancient times would be miffed about being “misgendered” by archaeologists and anthropologists. The left’s war on the past shows their ferocious desire to control the future. By normalizing sexual chaos in the now and using that to contextualize the past, transgenderism activists are chipping away at the foundations of humanity. To participate in their charade, you must reject biology on all counts and accept what false narrative is force-fed to you as tolerance and acceptance.
Unfortunately, Americans are buying it. They are adding “pronouns” to their email signatures and Instagram bios. They cheer when Big Tech nukes someone like Jordan Peterson from Twitter for “deadnaming” actress Ellen Page and pointing out that no amount of mutilation will change her sex into accord with her new name, Elliot Page. They collectively moan when they hear another Republican state passed legislation affirming women’s sports or launched an investigation into puberty-blocking drug manufacturers.
The left wants a monopoly on language, definitions, and history because once you control those, you have the power to set the narrative for everyone else — past, present, and future. That’s why institutions from schools to libraries to sports leagues and all the way up to the federal government are plagued with propaganda pretending it’s perfectly fine and normal for immature, underdeveloped children to make life-changing, physically altering, and often irreversible choices.
Thanks to elevation by the corrupt press, pharmaceutical companies, and social media echo chambers, that propaganda is working. Not only has the number of self-proclaimed trans teens nearly doubled since 2017 to 300,000, but a “study found that people 13 to 25 accounted for a disproportionately large share of the transgender population” in the United States.
As The New York Times succinctly put it, “trans identification in recent years has become political dynamite, driven in part by the rise in minors seeking medical treatments.” These “medical treatments,” often touted as life-saving, include chemical castration, genital mutilation, and other irreversible procedures and prescriptions that lack approval from the Food and Drug Administration, but those dangerous risks are memory-holed by the White House and the corporate media. This spin is present throughout the whole trans movement.
Just like it is taboo to mention that there is often regret associated with sculpting bodies into something they are not, it is almost always forbidden to mention the name and life associated with a person before he or she “transitioned.”
Any mention of a “deadname” could evoke a deranged rage because, for the radical gender idealists, any mention of the past that doesn’t comport with their perception of the future must be rejected.
That’s why leftists demand we pretend Lia Thomas wasn’t just an average swimmer in the men’s division before deciding to switch over to the women’s category and destroying the competition there. That’s why Merriam-Webster has repeatedly caved to radical gender activists and updated its definitions to reflect ideology instead of science, truth, and fact.
The left doesn’t just want you to deny biological reality in the present. They want you to ignore that biology was ever valued in the past. Refuse to accept the terms and conditions of their wordplay and reject their attempts to replace fact and science with this radical new orthodoxy on sex. It’s wrong, it’s revisionist, and it’s already harming an entire generation of moldable children at a historic rate.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
A Biden Climate Emergency Would Unleash Unconstitutional Actions
BY: CHUCK DEVORE | JULY 21, 2022
Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/07/21/a-biden-climate-emergency-would-unleash-unconstitutional-actions/
Biden is considering invoking considerable powers, but executive actions taken for a ‘climate emergency’ would be unconstitutional.
CHUCK DEVORE
VISIT ON TWITTER@CHUCKDEVORE
The left is pressuring President Joe Biden to declare a climate emergency and his consideration of this declaration is a sign of desperation and weakness. Executive actions taken as a result of a “climate emergency” would die in the U.S. Supreme Court (more on that later).
The reason Biden may declare a climate emergency is simple: His green agenda has stalled. Persistent inflation, led by rising energy costs, and a nation likely in recession, has reduced the likelihood that a narrowly divided Congress will approve the application of additional environmental leaches to an anemic economy.
It appears green dreams are the ultimate First World luxury good — it’s all fun and games until the average family shells out $5,000 a year more for gas, food, electricity, and rent. Yet the left demands more. Elected representatives are a roadblock. The people don’t know what’s best for them. The Vanguard of the Proletariat have met and decided that if Congress won’t act, then an array of administrative acronyms led by the dogmatic theoreticians of the White House — none of whom who have run a business — will.
The powers Biden is considering invoking are considerable, though none of them were intended by Congress to do what administration is preparing to do. Even a short summary is terrifyingly breathtaking in ambition and disingenuous creativity.
Burdensome Regulations
In March, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed a rule to require “climate-related disclosures for investors.” This rule, if finalized, would deal further hammer blows to the domestic oil and gas industry — just after Biden was forced to go hat in hand to Saudi Arabia to beg Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for more oil. It would do that by requiring publicly traded companies to detail their greenhouse gas emissions, including those of their suppliers, whether they are publicly traded or not. In other words, privately held firms, family-owned companies, and individual proprietorships would be burdened with costly reporting requirements, causing more money to be put into paperwork and less money to be put into productive activity.
Next, just because the Supreme Court rolled back regulatory power in June’s West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) decision doesn’t mean that the EPA won’t still be used to achieve climate goals in ways Congress never authorized. For instance, it’s expected that the EPA will issue new particulate thresholds that would have the practical effect of regulating all combustion for energy and transportation purposes. Particulates are small particles that, in today’s era of clean air, are mostly generated by farming, wildfires, and construction activities — modern combustion is remarkably clean. However, because ambient levels of particulates are very hard to push below a certain level, there will always be an excuse to squeeze for more until every vehicle powered by hydrocarbons is removed from the road or curbed by fees. Put another way, it’s a war on using hydrocarbons to make energy or power vehicles.
Misuse of the Law
The declaration of a climate emergency would also embolden the Biden administration to invoke Section 202 of the Federal Power Act. This law, clearly intended by Congress to be used only in time of war or an emergency due to an increased demand for electricity or a shortage of electricity, will be used to shift electrical power from regions that have responsibly planned for their power needs to states that have gone green and, as a result, have made their grids vulnerable to the vicissitudes of weather. This means that the federal government could literally divert power contracted for by Arizona and shift it to California — a version of this happened a year ago. Essentially, a maximalist use of Section 202 will allow leftwing Biden appointees to turn the power off wherever they choose — all for environmental justice and the planet, of course.
Finally, Biden’s environmental zealots are looking to the Defense Production Act (DPA) to commandeer any part of the economy they feel should be drafted into the fight against climate change. Former President Donald Trump used the DPA to order 3M to produce N95 masks and General Motors to produce ventilators for the federal government. Biden invoked it for Covid-19 purposes as well and then improbably expanded its use to (try to) address the baby formula shortage. With the DPA now unleashed for decidedly non-war applications, the ability to muck with all aspects of the economy for the “climate emergency” are endless.
Administrative State in Retreat
Fortunately, due to the unlikely success of the duo of Trump and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the federal bench was well-provisioned with constitutionally minded jurists. As a result, the unbridled powers of the administrative state have been in retreat.
Former six-term Indiana Republican Congressman John Hostettler, vice president of federal affairs with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, observes that, “Justice Alito’s concurrence in Gundy v. United States was a clear signal that he is willing to put an end to the administrative state if the right case comes before the Supreme Court. And the left knows it.”
Hostettler was referring to Justice Samuel Alito’s 2019 opinion, which was characterized by his colleague, Justice Neil Gorsuch, as “not join[ing] either the [court] plurality’s constitutional or statutory analysis,” In it, Alito stated:
The Constitution confers on Congress certain “legislative [p]owers,” Art. I, §1, and does not permit Congress to delegate them to another branch of the Government…. Nevertheless, since 1935, the Court has uniformly rejected nondelegation arguments and has upheld provisions that authorized agencies to adopt important rules pursuant to extraordinarily capacious standards….
If a majority of this Court were willing to reconsider the approach we have taken for the past 84 years, I would support that effort. But because a majority is not willing to do that, it would be freakish to single out the provision at issue here for special treatment.
Moreover, Hostettler maintains, “Given the addition of the likely votes of Justices [Brett] Kavanaugh and [Amy Coney] Barrett, there’s even more cause for optimism that the High Court is likely to do what Congress seems unable to accomplish. That optimism was bolstered with the outcome in West Virginia v. EPA. Although West Virginia wasn’t the nondelegation case that Alito’s previous pronouncement called for, it’s close enough to stiffen the resolve of Constitutionalists to come up with the right case so that the Court’s majority can further cement its direction on the ‘major question’ doctrine — the concept that if an agency seeks to regulate on a ‘major question’ the statute must clearly grant that express authority.”
For this reason, Hostettler is confident that the Biden administration’s climate emergency overreach would “do to the expansive power of the administrative state what Dobbs did to Roe v. Wade.”
In war there are casualties — and Biden’s climate war threatens to claim the once-mighty power of unelected bureaucrats and left-wing appointees to rule our lives without our votes.
Chuck DeVore is vice president of national initiatives at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a former California legislator, special assistant for foreign affairs in the Reagan-era Pentagon, and a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army (retired) Reserve. He’s the author of two books, “The Texas Model: Prosperity in the Lone Star State and Lessons for America,” and “China Attacks,” a novel.
House Democrats block resolution condemning violence against churches, pro-life pregnancy centers
By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter | July 21, 2022
Read more at https://www.christianpost.com/news/dems-block-resolution-condemning-attacks-on-pregnancy-centers.html/
Congressional Democrats have blocked a resolution that would have condemned the violence directed at churches and pro-life organizations by pro-abortion activists in recent months. On Tuesday, Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., introduced House Resolution 1233, which would “[express] the sense of the House of Representatives condemning the recent attacks on pro-life facilities, groups, and churches.” The resolution noted that “since the May 2, 2022 leak of the Supreme Court’s draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, individuals professing anti-life views have targeted, destroyed, or vandalized numerous pro-life facilities, groups, and even churches to further their radical cause.”
The leaked Dobbs draft, published by Politico, indicated that a majority of Supreme Court justices were inclined to reverse the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide. The final Dobbs ruling, released on June 24, ultimately reversed Roe and stated the Constitution doesn’t confer a right to abortion. The resolution listed examples of the vandalism directed at churches and pro-life organizations before and after Dobbs. Johnson’s resolution would have declared that the House “condemns recent attacks of vandalism, violence, and destruction against pro-life facilities, groups, and churches,” “recognizes the sanctity of life and the important role pro-life facilities, groups, and churches play in supporting pregnant women, infants, and families.”
The resolution urged “the Biden Administration to use all appropriate law enforcement authorities to uphold public safety and to protect the rights of” such organizations. Johnson elaborated on the need for the resolution on the House floor as the House considered the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, the Right to Contraception Act and the Respect for Marriage Act.
“If the previous question is defeated, Republicans will amend the rule to immediately consider House Resolution 1233,” Johnson vowed.
The previous question was not defeated, as the House agreed to begin debate on the three pieces of legislation in a party-line vote. Later Tuesday, the House approved the Respect for Marriage Act, which would codify same-sex marriage into federal law, accumulating support from all Democrats and 47 Republicans.
The Twitter account for Republicans on the House Rules Committee shared a video of Johnson’s speech on the House floor.
“@HouseDemocrats refused @HouseGOP requests to consider @RepMikeJohnson’s resolution condemning the escalating violence & vandalism by radical left-wing activists that care for pregnant women, infants & families,” the House Rules Republicans tweeted.
The push to pass the Right to Contraception Act and the Respect for Marriage Act, two of the three pieces of legislation House Democrats were seeking to begin debate on, suggests that the Dobbs ruling was very much on their minds. Progressive have feared that the Dobbs decision could pave the way for the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider other landmark Supreme Court rulings championed by Democrats, specifically those legalizing contraception nationwide and requiring all 50 states to recognize same-sex marriages. In a concurring opinion in Dobbs, Justice Clarence Thomas suggested that the court should “reconsider” the aforementioned cases and determine “whether other constitutional provisions guarantee” the “rights” created by those decisions other than the “legal fiction” of “substantive due process.”
The majority opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, insisted that this decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right,” adding, “Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”
Pro-abortion activists calling themselves Jane’s Revenge have taken credit for multiple acts of vandalism against churches and pro-life organizations, recently declaring “open season” on such groups.
Johnson believes inaction from the House puts churches, pro-life groups and Supreme Court justices at risk. He criticized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for only bringing a bill to increase security for Supreme Court justices up for a vote after police arrested a man who admitted he wanted to assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh but turned himself over to authorities.
The bill unanimously passed the U.S. Senate and ultimately passed the House overwhelmingly six days after the assassination attempt.
“Radical leftists were emboldened by the inaction of this body in the aftermath of the leaked opinion,” Johnson said. “When will this body stand up against the mob? When will we restore law and order?”
Johnson claims that pro-choice elected officials have done the exact opposite.
On multiple occasions since the release of the Dobbs decision, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has echoed the calls from Jane’s Revenge, demanding that pro-life pregnancy centers be shut down. Most recently, Warren maintained that such organizations “are there to fool people who are looking for pregnancy termination help.”
“You should not be able to torture a pregnant person like that,” she added. “We need to shut them down here in Massachusetts, and we need to shut them down all around the country.”
Many pro-life pregnancy centers are staffed by licensed medical professionals and provide things like pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, prenatal care, cancer screenings and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases. Many also provide families with diapers, wipes, baby formula, baby food, clothing and other supplies.
Heidi Matzke, the executive director of Alternatives Pregnancy Center in Sacramento, California, told the Senate Judiciary Committee last week that her clinic has recently spent up to $150,000 to improve security measures.
“Our clinic is one of 3,000 pregnancy care centers across America,” Matzke said. “Each year, hundreds of thousands come to our clinics looking for free medical care, emotional support and practical resources that will enable them to carry their pregnancies to term.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
American Academy of Pediatrics Promotes Murder of Future Patients
BY: OLIVIA HAJICEK | JULY 21, 2022
Read more at https://www.conservativereview.com/american-academy-of-pediatrics-promotes-murder-of-future-patients-2657707088.html/
The American Academy of Pediatrics called for “reproductive justice” and advocated for pediatricians helping minors get abortions without their parents’ knowledge in the July issue of its official journal Pediatrics. Like other pro-abortion advocates who exploit young and vulnerable girls to advance their agenda — as in the recent viral story of the 10-year-old Ohio rape victim — the article used the story of a 14-year-old Guatemalan immigrant girl to argue for a more “holistic approach to reproductive rights that considers factors such as race, language, and socioeconomic status on the reproductive health of women.”
According to the article, the girl experienced complications after taking the abortion drug misoprostol and went to a facility that gave her a surgical abortion and helped her with the “judicial bypass” process so she could do it without her parents’ knowledge. After the abortion, the girl received a Nexplanon implant — a type of birth control that increases the chance that any pregnancy that occurs will be ectopic and puts the female at greater risk of blood clots, heart attacks, and strokes.
The academy’s takeaway from this story, which it foisted upon its readers, was that the “pediatric community” should “advocate for reproductive policies that expand access to care for adolescent patients.” In other words, it thinks doctors should push for making it easier for kids to abort their own children. Further, the American Academy of Pediatrics wants to hide this from minors’ parents and couches its concern in terms of the “deeply intertwined social, economic, and cultural barriers” of racial minorities.
“Now more than ever, training programs should ensure that pediatric residents competently provide culturally sensitive, nonjudgmental counseling around abortion care, contraception, and judicial bypass,” the article said.
Dr. George Fidone, who has a large private practice with five clinics in Texas, told The Federalist that the journal has become increasingly left-leaning. “Years ago the lead article might be on meningitis or pneumonia or a new vaccine or whatever,” he said. “Now it’s all about trans health, gender fluidity, how we’re supposed to counsel people, starting at very young ages, about the notion of gender fluidity or whatever.”
The article also said the academy “joined 38 other physician groups in opposing the passage of Texas Senate Bill 8,” which prohibits abortions after a baby’s heartbeat can be detected.
“So the American Academy of Pediatrics is advocating for the wholesale murder of unborn children,” Fidone said. “What? What has the state of our academy become?”
Olivia Hajicek is an intern at The Federalist and a junior at Hillsdale College studying history and journalism. She has covered campus and city news as a reporter for The Hillsdale Collegian. You can reach her at olivia.hajicek@gmail.com.
OLIVIA HAJICEK
‘Not If the Woman Holds It’: Chip Roy Responds to Nadler’s Claims About Domestic Violence and Guns
By SARAH WEAVER, STAFF WRITER | July 21, 2022
Republican Texas Rep. Chip Roy responded to Democratic New York Rep. Jerry Nadler’s claim Wednesday that the presence of a gun in a house would increase the likelihood of women being killed in domestic violence situations.
“The presence of a gun in domestic violence situations increases the risk of homicide by women by 500%,” Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said in a hearing Wednesday. “So, pass this amendment, and you’ll see an increase in domestic — in homicides of women by 500%.”
“I would note that the chairman just said that the existence of a firearm — I think you might have said in the household, I’m not sure — increases the likelihood of violence by 500% or something of that nature,” Roy responded.
“And I’d say, well, not if the woman holds it.”
Trending videos
Tucker’s Reaction To AOC’s Fake Handcuff Fiasco!
Roy also said that Nadler’s position would result in banning all guns.
“If you’re saying firearms generally, then the next step for the chairman is to limit all firearms — which, let’s get to the heart of it, we know that that is where our colleagues wish to go,” Roy said. (RELATED: ‘That’s The Point’: Rep. Nadler Admits Bill Will Confiscate Guns In ‘Common Use’)
Two were debating H.R. 1808, also known as the “Assault Weapons Ban Act of 2021.”
“This bill makes it a crime to knowingly import, sell, manufacture, transfer, or possess a semiautomatic assault weapon (SAW) or large capacity ammunition feeding device (LCAFD),” the bill’s summary reads.
The committee approved the ban Wednesday, with every Republican on the committee voting against the legislation. The bill will advance to the House floor for a vote.
The bill was first introduced by Democratic Rhode Island Rep. David Cicilline in March 2021.
Missouri sheriff refuses to release gun owner info to the FBI: ‘I will go down with the ship if need be’
Reported by CARLOS GARCIA | July 20, 2022
A sheriff in Missouri has refused to release gun owner information to the FBI, even if the agency threatens to arrest him. Republican Scotland County Sheriff Bryan Whitney wrote to residents in his community on Monday about the plan to audit Missouri’s gun owner records.
“As the sheriff of Scotland County, I want all my citizens to know that I will not allow, cooperate or release any [conceal carry weapon] information to the FBI, ‘even at the threat of a federal arrest,’” said Whitney.
“Point Blank, ‘I will go down with the ship if need be,’” he added, according to Fox News.
Whitney says the FBI planned to audit 24 counties, though it is unknown which counties in Missouri would be affected.
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt also sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, criticizing the decision.
“The FBI has absolutely no business poking around in the private information of those who have obtained a concealed carry permit in Missouri,” Schmitt wrote.
“The Second Amendment rights of Missourians will absolutely not be infringed on my watch,” he added. “I will use the full power of my Office to stop the FBI, which has become relentlessly politicized and has virtually no credibility, from illegally prying around in the personal information of Missouri gun owners.”
Schmitt also pointed out that many Missouri residents don’t trust the FBI because of various recent scandals involving the bureau.
“You may wonder why there is such strong suspicion of federal agents here in the ‘Show Me State.’ Simply put, Missourians are hard-working, law-abiding citizens who don’t need a national nanny-state keeping tabs on us. But more than that, over the last couple of years, we’ve seen story after story of incompetence and corruption at the highest levels of the FBI,” he added.
The FBI said in a statement to Fox News that the audit would be routine and that no personal information would be at risk.
Schmitt, however, pointed directly to the “witch hunt” against former President Donald Trump to support his contention that the FBI could not be trusted.
Here’s more about Missouri defying the FBI:
Several Missouri sheriffs say they refuse to handover concealed carry documents if asked by …www.youtube.com
Watch: Underground training for ‘abortion doulas’ and DIY abortions in Iowa exposed on ‘The Steve Deace Show’
By CHRIS PANDOLFO | July 21, 2022
Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/deace-abortion-doulas-underground-iowa/
An Iowa-based volunteer organization calling itself the Iowa Jane Collective recently held “abortion doula” training and instructed participants on how to perform do-it-yourself abortions at home and support women seeking to terminate their pregnancies as states move to restrict the procedure.
In a special report for “The Steve Deace Show” on BlazeTV, host Steve Deace’s daughter Anastasia Deace signed up for the training seminar, which was held virtually on July 9, and described how the group is seeking to provide underground abortion services to women after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned its Roe v. Wade decision and permitted states to pass laws limiting or banning abortion. The training was offered for free and advertised how participants would “Learn how to offer physical, emotional, and spiritual support to someone during their abortion process.” The group also provided “logistical information about different types of abortion procedures, where to get abortion care in Iowa, and payment options.”
The Iowa Jane Collective encouraged participants to donate between $5 and $50 and suggested that “white folks who register for this training to donate at the higher end of this scale.”
The name “Jane Collective” was adopted by various pro-abortion groups in the pre-Roe era when abortion was illegal in several states. Activists in the 1960s would assist women in obtaining secret abortions, often in unsafe conditions for fear of being discovered by law enforcement. Groups like the Iowa Jane Collective have reorganized in the wake of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision to provide women with free contraception, pregnancy tests, and to assist them in obtaining abortion services should they wish to end their pregnancies.
“They cannot and will not stop us from protecting one another and providing each other with access to safe abortion. This court is illegitimate, our human rights are innate and NO MATTER WHAT WE PROTECT US!” the group declared on June 24 after the Supreme Court issued its abortion opinion.
An “abortion doula” is “a person who provides compassionate and nonjudgmental support throughout an abortion experience,” according to a slideshow presentation by the group that was recorded by Deace.
A CNN report published Wednesday explained that abortion doulas are not midwives or medical practitioners. Rather, they provide emotional support and information for women seeking abortion services. Examples may be holding a patient’s hand during the procedure or providing advice and helping a woman schedule appointments with abortion centers.
In the Iowa Jane Collective training video, an instructor who uses “they/them” pronouns describes how using terms like “zygote, embryo, or fetus” is preferred when discussing abortions because the words “baby” or “child” carry connotations of personhood.
“It’s not wrong for somebody to use the words ‘baby’ or ‘child’ when they’re talking about a pregnancy, but, like, you don’t necessarily want to using language that your client might be uncomfortable with,” the instructor says.
The slideshow also covers “alternative methods of abortion” that women may pursue at home without the assistance of a licensed physician. It includes instruction on popular methods such as medication abortions — the two-drug regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol, which taken together cause miscarriage — as well as other techniques such as “herbal abortion” or “manual vacuum aspiration at home.”
A manual vacuum aspiration is “a simple procedure done early in pregnancy, which uses the suction of a syringe to remove the pregnancy tissue from the uterus,” according to Women’s College Hospital. It is performed within the first seven to eight weeks after a woman’s last period and involves using a thin tube “guided through the cervical opening into the uterus.” A syringe is attached to the tube and used to remove the developing baby through suction.
Another slide describes how women may used “induced hyperthermia” to induce abortion — intentionally overheating their bodies with “hot baths, sauna, steam, a hot day, untreated fever, or vigorous exercise” to cause the baby to die. The slide mentions this technique “is most effective before 12 weeks, and often done in conjunction with other methods.”
The role of an abortion doula is to talk through these options and assist women in obtaining abortions, which, depending on state laws, may be aiding and abetting illegal procedures. The instructor contrasted this work with pro-life pregnancy centers, which she accused of harboring an “agenda” to dissuade pregnant mothers from seeking an abortion.
Deace reported that 130 people joined the training session on July 9.
“That is 130 people who are not qualified, who do not have certificates, but who are bringing abortions and performing abortions to a neighbor near you,” she said.
Watch:
EVIL: Iowa Group Seeks to Train “Abortion Doulas” | Steve Deace Showyoutu.be
The Iowa Jane Collective will host another training session sometime in August.
Abortion is currently legal in Iowa up to 20 weeks of pregnancy, after which it is only permitted in medical emergencies. However, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds is seeking to have a court injunction against the state’s fetal heartbeat law lifted, which would ban abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. The governor has also successfully fought for law that establishes a 24-hour waiting period before a woman may obtain an abortion.
Ann Coulter Op-ed: ‘Ohio Man’ Rapes 10-Year-Old
Commentary by Ann Coulter | Posted: Jul 20, 2022
Read more at https://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2022/07/20/ohio-man-rapes-10yearold—p–n2610564/
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com, and WhatDidYouSay.org.
Source: AP Manual Upload
I, for one, am tickled pink that our ruling class has finally come out against child rape. This is something new. For several decades now, the position of government officials, both political parties, think tanks, the Bush family, district attorneys and the entire media has been: We’re going to foist primitive, peasant cultures on America and then lie to the public about how this is changing our country.
We recently found out about one big way that third-world immigrants are enriching us. Soon after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the media began talking nonstop about a “10-year-old rape victim” who couldn’t get an abortion in Ohio and had to travel to Indiana. The “10-year-old rape victim” was discussed on a loop on MSNBC and even made it into a speech by President Joe Biden.
But then, a bunch of spoilsports started questioning whether “10-year-old rape victim” existed. The attorney general of Ohio said on July 12 he had no evidence of a 10-year-old rape victim, despite the reporting of such a crime being mandatory.
With their backs against the wall, the pro-abortion crowd broke longstanding strictures against mentioning the rapey-ness of our “New Americans” by producing the rapist: Gerson Fuentes, 27, an illegal alien from Guatemala.
Oh, now I see.
The abortion ladies thought they could get away with revealing the child rape victim, while refusing to reveal the child rape perpetrator. When that failed, they wantonly defied the rest of their coalition and told the truth about one of the Democrats’ pets, an illegal immigrant.
Once the pro-abortion crowd identified the rapist, nothing about the story was surprising. It has all the earmarks of an immigrant child rape:
The crime is particularly vile — CHECK!
The raping had been going on for some time — CHECK!
The mother defended her daughter’s rapist — CHECK!
The rapist is shocked that anyone thinks he did anything wrong — CHECK!
Luckily, I am Johnny on the Spot when it comes to immigrant child-rapists, having included nearly 100 such cases in my book “Adios, America!” — as well as the sensational, flood-the-zone news coverage the U.S. media devote to criminal immigrants. (Sarcasm.)
As far as I know, there’s only one group in the country trying to keep a running tally of immigrant child rapes: North Carolinians for Immigration Reform and Enforcement (NCFire.info). Here’s NCFire’s list of illegal immigrant child rapists in North Carolina, so far this year.
2022 Monthly Child Rapes by Illegal Aliens:
6. June 2022: 20 illegal aliens arrested for 42 child rape/child sexual assault charges
5. May 2022: 18 illegal aliens arrested for 42 child rape/child sexual assault charges
4. April 2022: 19 illegal aliens arrested for 72 child rape/child sexual assault charges
3. March 2022: 30 illegal aliens arrested for 110 child rape/child sexual assault charges
2. February 2022: 27 illegal aliens arrested for 84 child rape/child sexual assault charges
1. January 2022: 18 illegal aliens arrested for 96 child rape/child sexual assault charges
Again, that’s only in a single state. And only when the immigrant is illegal.
WHY DOESN’T THE PUBLIC KNOW ABOUT THIS?
Unfortunately, our media are too busy reporting on apocryphal gang rapes by the Duke lacrosse team and “frat boys” at the University of Virginia to bother mentioning the epidemic of child rape by immigrants from peasant cultures pouring into our country by the million.
How far into the stories about UVA and Duke did you have to read to find out that the (falsely) accused rapists were “privileged white men”?
By contrast, whenever the media deign to mention an immigrant rapist, the story will appear in — at most — one local newspaper. Further, both the heinous nature of the crime and the immigration status of the rapist will be hidden. (How about a news report on the Duke lacrosse case, appearing exclusively in the local paper at the bottom of page A-18, titled, “Area Men Arrested.”)
In 2013, an illegal alien from Guatemala, German Rolando Vicente-Sapon, was convicted of kidnapping his 16-year-old cousin, transporting her to the U.S. (also illegally), and holding her as his sex slave for years.
Only one newspaper in the country reported the story: the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
Quiz: Was the headline —
“Illegal Alien Sentenced for Incest, Child Rape, Kidnapping and Sex Slavery,” OR
“Man Guilty in Case of Human Smuggling”?
I think you know the answer.
There’s no question that the national media would never have breathed a word about the Fuentes case — but for the doubters. So, a big shoutout to the feminists for putting abortion-on-demand above open borders. If only politicians cared as much about our country as pro-choicers do about abortion.
The new world order and the whiff of the apocalyptic
By Wallace B. Henley, Exclusive Columnist | July 20, 2022
Read more at https://www.christianpost.com/news/the-new-world-order-and-the-whiff-of-the-apocalyptic.html/
The world under the dictatorship of the global elite… new messiahs who will try to raise up the Millennial kingdom without the King… the linkage of world economies into one tight unit so vulnerable it all could collapse in a mere hour… the raising up of an entire world order that is strictly secular: all this is almost a parody of the book of Revelation.
The whiff of the apocalyptic is all around it.
Maybe this scenario is a stretch, but the Great Reset is turning out to be the Great Upset, caused by government manipulation, with the encouragement of the World Economic Forum (WEF), the United Nations, and other elites who believe they have the right to steer nations and economies into a new “liberal world order” fueled by green energy policies.
The Apostle John on Patmos would not be surprised. Things are possible on a global scale now that could not have happened when elderly John, exiled to the Isle of Patmos, was in a cave seeing the Revelation visions. For example, even in recent times, people could have sneered at the possibility of a one-hour disintegration of world commerce, but in this internet age for the first time in history it is now possible, and the vulnerability is increasing. (Revelation 18:17)
Into this troubling panorama come the elites who want to manipulate into existence a new world order.
To say nothing of the technologically “developed” nations, how does this play out in the dark alleys of India, dry stretches of Burkina Faso, deep jungles of Brazil, and all the other countries where people barely survive?
Who gave President Joe Biden and the financial giants of the WEF and bureaucrats at the U.N. the authority to declare and engineer a new world order?
The hubris of such an assumption is dizzying. It is distressing to realize that hubris is often followed by humiliation when grand reordering schemes shatter. As a former White House aide, I have seen the disastrous outcomes of the excesses of power.
Previous generations of world orderers have tried global reordering and perished in the process as their hubristic goals collapsed on them and their citizens. I once lived in Nuremberg and drove through the ruins of the great marching field where Hitler waved at his admirers in Wagnerian triumph. I have strolled through the grandeur of Russia’s St. Petersburg but have also seen the decay left on the back streets after the communists tried to impose their new order on the world.
Biden and his fellow world arrangers will also discover that the Great Reset depends upon a lot of manipulating of everything from fuel to food to finance and much more. Hence, the shutting down of a sizable portion of the United States’ energy-producing sector, resulting in high consumer prices, along with an increase in all other commodities that must be transported by gas-dependent vehicles.
And from the power centers that structure the new order one can hear the promise: “Don’t worry… this is good for you.”
Monarchs and oligarchs across history have chanted that line as they crafted their new worlds. Whether from the Right or the Left, ultimately the whiff of apocalypse slithers through it all.
The only global system that will be a truly blessed “re-ordering” is that of the Kingdom of Heaven whose governance is on the shoulders of the Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6) Until then, well-meaning leaders, as well as the more sinister varieties, will keep storming the Throne of the Kingdom, hoping to get a new world order in place with themselves overseeing and manipulating it all from lofty perches.
“Now is the time when things are shifting,” President Biden told a group of elite business leaders recently. “There’s going to be a new world order out there, and we’ve got to lead it, and we’ve got to unite the rest of the free world in doing it.”
Biden may not see himself as initiating the Great Reset, but he does see himself and his allies as shaping it. To do that, as the president has pointed out, the people must pay the price. Hence inflation-bound money and uncertain alliances and greater government control in every sector of society.
So, Pete Buttigieg, secretary of Transportation in the Biden administration, voiced and celebrated the hope that higher prices at the pump will compel drivers to replace gas-guzzlers with electric vehicles.[1] Americans will have to endure pain at the pump indefinitely in the name of the “liberal world order.”
Who gave Biden or any chief of state and his or her aides and elitists the authority to foster a new order for the entire world and establish policies that will impact other sovereign states? Is this a form of colonialism by a more acceptable label? How many more Sri Lankas will have to collapse under this load imposed through the richer nations for the sake of the green agenda?
What kinds of systems will emerge when human leaders try to steer history by their conjured visions, blurry assumptions, hubristic presumptions, skewered world views, and shifting value-sets?
The quest for a more livable environment for all in the present as well as the future is certainly important. However, if that means chiefs of state have the right to impose the new order globally through manipulation, then there is much about which to be concerned.
Anyone who has read the book of Revelation might conclude that there is the whiff of the apocalyptic here.
[1] Buttigieg Boasts Gas Prices Are Forcing Americans Towards EVs (breitbart.com)
Wallace B. Henley is a former pastor, daily newspaper editor, White House and Congressional aide. He served 18 years as a teaching pastor at Houston’s Second Baptist Church. Henley is author or co-author of more than 25 books, including God and Churchill, co-authored with Sir Winston Churchill’s great grandson, Jonathan Sandys. Henley’s latest book is Who will rule the coming ‘gods’? The looming spiritual crisis of artificial intelligence.
Judge In Stefan Halper Case Drops SpyGate Bombshell: Halper Likely Lied To The FBI On Purpose
BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JULY 20, 2022
‘There are now a fair number of documentations’ showing that Stefan Halper ‘may have made clear misstatements to the FBI,’ the court said.
MARGOT CLEVELAND
VISIT ON TWITTER@PROFMJCLEVELAND
Documents suggest that Stefan Halper “may have made clear misstatements to the FBI” and may be responsible for “some falsehoods” about Michael Flynn and Svetlana Lokhova, according to the federal judge presiding over the lawsuit Lokhova filed against the former FBI confidential human source, or “CHS,” embroiled in the SpyGate scandal.
On Friday, a federal court in Virginia denied Halper’s Motion to Dismiss the lawsuit Lokhova had filed against him in December of 2020. That lawsuit represented Lokhova’s second civil case against Halper, with her alleging in her most recent complaint that when Halper learned she was penning a book about Halper, “he directed his counsel, Terry Reed, to contact Post Hill Press and Simon & Schuster solely for the purposes of ‘quash[ing] publication and cancel[ing] the Book Contract.’” Reed then allegedly “contacted [Simon & Schuster] and [Post Hill Press] and falsely accused [them] of defaming Halper in the marketing materials.”
The complaint further alleged that, through the letters, Halper “defamed and disparaged” Lokhova to the publishers and falsely accused her of “knowingly publishing” statements that were “false.” Lokhova claimed that Halper then “escalated the threats and intimidation to [Simon & Schuster’s] parent company, CBS Corporation.” The complaint alleged his accusations were untrue and that “[t]he sole purpose of Halper’s actions was to interfere with [Lokhova’s] Book Contract and induce [Post Hill Press] to terminate the Contract,” which it ultimately did after facing irresistible pressure from Simon & Schuster.
The “book contract” Halper allegedly succeeded in canceling was for Lokhova’s forthcoming nonfiction work entitled, “The Spider: Stefan A. Halper and the Dark Web of a Coup.” The marketing material for the book described Halper as a “spy, an evil spider at work within and around the Trump campaign,” and that in that capacity, he “initially targeted the important Trump advisor, Lt. General Michael Flynn.”
In promoting the book, the publisher, Post Hill Press, in conjunction with Simon & Schuster, which Post Hill Press had contracted to market and distribute “The Spider,” also asserted Lokhova’s book revealed that Halper had “fabricated and sustained the fantastical narrative of the Russian hoax,” and that he did so by “collaborat[ing] with the intelligence establishment to take the ‘kill shot on Flynn,’ leaking classified information to his associates in the press.”
Lokhova explained her motivation for writing the book in the amended complaint she filed in the Virginia federal court. “In February 2017, a month after the birth of her first child,” the document read, Lokhova “was inundated by the media and others over false allegations that had suddenly surfaced that she had supposedly conducted a clandestine romantic affair with General Michael Flynn, an American military and intelligence official whom she had met once at an academic dinner over two years earlier and had never seen or spoken to again.” Lokhova explained how she then spent the next two-plus years, “piecing together what had happened to her, partly through her own research, partly through the gradual release of information by the United States government, and partly through reporting by U.S. media outlets.”
According to Lokhova’s amended complaint, by late 2019 she “had gathered sufficient information and evidence to demonstrate how the false allegations about her and General Flynn had arisen, and who had conveyed them to the FBI and to the media.” Lokhova explained that after obtaining a book contract and American publishers, she set to work to write the book, with a planned 2020 release date. But according to Lokhova, her publisher canceled her contract after Halper threatened her publisher, the distributor, and even CBS Corporation. Lokhova then self-published the book, renaming it “Spygate Exposed: The Conspiracy to Topple President Trump.”
After Lokhova released “Spygate Exposed,” an FBI “Electronic Communication,” dated August 15, 2016, was declassified in early 2021. That document memorialized information provided to the FBI by an unnamed CHS on August 11, 2016. While the electronic communication did not identify Halper as the CHS, it documented several claimed interactions the CHS had with Trump campaign advisers. Those advisers would all later identify Halper as the individual with whom they had spoken, making clear that Halper was the unidentified CHS.
Significantly, in his August 11, 2016, conversation with the FBI, Halper “relayed an incident s/he witnessed when CROSSFIRE RAZOR (CR) spoke at” an event that was redacted in the document. CROSSFIRE RAZOR was the codename for Flynn.
According to Halper, while he was unsure of the date of the event at which Flynn spoke, he remembered that at the time, Flynn still held his position in the U.S. Intelligence Community. Halper told the FBI that after Flynn spoke and socialized with various individuals (whose names were redacted) at dinner and over drinks, Flynn got into a cab to go to the train station to catch a train to London. “The CHS stated that a woman, SVETLANA LOKHOVA, surprised everyone and got into [Flynn’s] cab and joined [Flynn] on the train ride to London.” Halper further “recalled that LOKHOVA ‘latched’ onto Flynn when he was at the [dinner.].”
The electronic communication further documented Halper saying he was “somewhat suspicious of LOKHOVA,” and that he “believes that LOKHOVA’S father may be a Russian Oligarch living in London.” That portion of the report ended by noting that Halper “could not provide further information on [Flynn] and LOKHOVA’S trip.”
An electronic communication memorializing the FBI’s interview with Halper the following day, on August 12, 2016, recorded Halper providing more texture to the supposed Flynn-Lokhova rendezvous. Specifically, Halper clarified to the team where Lokhova supposedly got into the cab with Flynn before joining him on the train to London.
False Claims
Contrary to Halper’s claims to the FBI, however, he did not attend the February 2014 Cambridge dinner at which Flynn, then-President Obama’s director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, spoke and at which Lokhova, then a graduate student at Cambridge, attended. Nor did Lokhova leave the dinner with Flynn; she also did not jump into a cab with him and did not accompany him to London on the train.
Nonetheless, according to Lokhova’s amended complaint, Halper repeated his false allegations about her and “General Flynn to various members of the media who, upon information and belief, include, among others, journalists working for the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.” In turn, Lokhova alleged, “[M]any commentators, from national television hosts to ordinary citizens on social media, credited the false allegations that Plaintiff was a Russian spy who had ensnared General Flynn in a sexual or romantic imbroglio at the behest of the Kremlin.”
Halper’s claims to the FBI, Lokhova added, were also “a key reason why the FBI opened a subpart of [the Crossfire Hurricane] investigation that specifically focused on General Flynn,” with the FBI opening the separate investigation into Flynn just “one working day after Halper’s meeting at the FBI.”
In her lawsuit against Halper, Lokhova seeks recovery for the alleged false statements of fact he made to Post Hill Press and Simon & Schuster, namely that Halper falsely told the publisher and distributor of her proposed book that she had defamed him. Lokhova also seeks damages from Halper for tortiously interfering with her book contract. With Judge Leonie Brinkema denying Halper’s motion to dismiss Lokhova’s lawsuit on Friday, the historian and author now has an opportunity to obtain justice from Halper for his alleged defamatory statements.
Even Bigger Problems
But beyond vindicating her own interests, Lokhova’s lawsuit against Halper also provides a reminder of the problems the Crossfire Hurricane and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team had with the confidential human sources who supposedly aided their investigation into Trump’s purported collusion with Russia.
From the FBI’s electronic communication summary, it appears that Halper, who reportedly served as a confidential human source for the FBI from 2008 until his presumptive termination following his involvement in the targeting of Trump and the Trump campaign, lied to the FBI about Lokhova and Flynn and then repeated those lies to various members of the media. According to Lokhova, Halper did not even attend the event at which he claimed he “witnessed” her “latch” onto Flynn. And since she did not leave the event with Flynn and did not jump into a cab with him — much less journey to London with him — Halper’s claims to the FBI were not merely false, but knowingly so.
The federal judge hearing Halper’s Motion to Dismiss on Friday concluded that the documents could reasonably support that conclusion. “There are now a fair number of documentations that do, in fact, link your client to being this source, and more specific information that the description about the meeting in England with Mr. Flynn that this witness that Mr. Halper was, in fact, not present and therefore may have made clear misstatements to the FBI,” the court noted. At the early stage of the court proceedings, there “would seem to be enough to suggest that there may, in fact, be some falsehoods going on here on your client’s behalf,” Judge Brinkema said to Halper’s attorney.
Halper’s apparent lies about Flynn and Lokhova render his other CHS reporting suspect as well. And that other “reporting” was widespread, with Halper also serving as a CHS in questioning former Trump campaign advisers George Papadopoulos and Carter Page. Halper also wore a wire when he questioned Trump’s then co-campaign chair, Sam Clovis, on behalf of the FBI.
In fact, it appears Halper also misrepresented his interactions with Page during his August 11, 2016, interview with the FBI. The electronic communication summary of that debriefing stated that Halper “explained to the team that s/he had a private meeting with [Carter Page] on or about 7/18/2018.” Halper told the team, the document continued, “that the purpose of the meeting was to ask the CHS if s/he would want to join the Trump campaign as a foreign policy adviser.”
However, in an exclusive interview with The Federalist in 2020 — which followed the Inspector General’s release of its report on FISA abuse but preceded the declassification of the electronic communication summary of Halper’s conversations with the FBI — Page stated unequivocally that he never asked Halper “to be a foreign policy advisor for the Trump campaign.” And though “it is possible, Page acknowledged, that they explored some ways Halper might get involved indirectly at some point down the road,” it is “an extraordinary mischaracterization,” to say that he had asked Halper “to be a foreign policy advisor for the Trump campaign.”
Not only did Halper apparently mischaracterize his conversation with Page to the FBI, but it was also Halper and not the FBI who raised Page as a potential tasking for the former CHS. According to the case agent, “[T]he plan going into the meeting was to talk generally with [Halper] about Russian ‘interference in the election, what [Halper] may know, and … to bring up Papadopoulos.’” The FBI made no mention of Page and intended to task Halper solely with “‘reaching out to Papadopoulos which would allow the Crossfire Hurricane team to collect assessment information on Papadopoulos and potentially conduct an operation,’ when Halper inquired about whether the FBI also had an interest in Page.”
The Inspector General’s report on FISA abuse related to Page would later note that Halper’s handling agent found it “serendipitous” that Halper “had contacts with three of their four subjects, including Carter Page.” They “couldn’t believe [their] luck,” the handling agent noted, upon learning that Halper knew Flynn and Paul Manafort, and had crossed paths with Page just weeks before.
These facts, the seeming lies Halper told the FBI about Lokhova, and his apparent “extraordinary mischaracterization” of his discussions with Page leave one to wonder who was handling whom — and whether Special Counsel John Durham will ever answer that question.
Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
WATCH: Trump-Endorsed Kari Lake on Stage CALLS OUT Pence-Endorsed RINO Primary Opponent For “Duping THOUSANDS Of People Out of Money” – She Was the Very Next Speaker
By Jordan Conradson | Published July 19, 2022
Read more at https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/07/watch-trump-endorsed-kari-lake-stage-calls-pence-endorsed-rino-primary-opponent-duping-thousands-people-money-next-speaker/
Trump-Endorsed Arizona Gubernatorial frontrunner Kari Lake called out her billionaire RINO primary opponent in person for scamming thousands of American senior citizens out of their money. This was right before Karrin Taylor Robson spoke at the 78th Annual Mohave County Central Republican Committee Picnic last week. Robson is losing BIG, and she is desperate for grassroots support.
The Gateway Pundit recently conducted a poll with Cygnal Polling which found that Kari Lake and Trump-Endorsed Blake Masters for U.S. Senate both hold a steady double-digit lead over her primary opponents.
Kari Lake is Trump-Endorsed, and she is the only candidate with the guts to talk about the Rigged and Stolen 2020 Presidential Election. Because of this and her aggressive stances on other issues, Arizona loves her.
The Arizona State Media is pushing bogus polls in favor of her opponent to set the grounds for another rigged election.
Karrin Taylor Robson is a weak, pathetic RINO endorsed by Arizona Governor RINO Doug Ducey and Turncoat Mike Pence, who both certified the Fraudulent 2020 Election. Like other weak Republicans, Karrin Robson refuses to admit that the 2020 Election was stolen and incorrectly certified.
In order to save her failing campaign, Robson has turned to the “lowest of lows,” ripping off elderly American citizens with fraudulent text message fundraising schemes.
The Gateway Pundit recently reported that Kari Lake exposed Robson for using phone messaging alerts that purport to back various conservative causes to trick elderly conservatives into donating to her failing campaign.
According to Lake, she’s been doing this since August 2021, and over 1200 people have been refunded for their donations to Robson’s shady campaign.
“People are still figuring it out, and hundreds more this last reporting period figured out they were being swindled and demanded refunds,” said Kari Lake.
Kari released her exposé at the same moment that she called Robson out live at an event so that Robson would be totally unprepared and uncoached to deal with it. Lake told The Gateway Pundit that “without that coaching, she literally was speechless” when she took the stage immediately afterward.
Robson doesn’t even need this money. She already has so much money that she’s been caught donating thousands to elect democratic candidates up and down the ballot. She donated to Democrats in 2020, and she even donated to elect radical leftist anti-police Mayor Kate Gallego in 2019.
The Arizona Democratic Party recently thanked Robson in a statement for donating thousands of dollars to elect liberal Democrats “as recently as 2020.”
Her campaign is also funded by her husband, billionaire developer Ed Robson, and Anti-Lake Super PACs funded by Arizona’s elite. Robson and the PACs that support her are each dumping millions into attack ads against Kari Lake.
Lake gave us the following statement.
Lake: She got up on stage, and she didn’t have any response to it because there is no response. She is swindling elderly people out of their social security check. There is no response to that. The sick part is that she didn’t even need the money. Her husband is giving her a “blank check.” She did this in order to trick people, so it looks like she has grassroots support when she has none. Nobody wants her, and she’s trying to make it look like they do, and it’s really disgusting, frankly.
She is a closet liberal, and she is going to destroy this state if she gets anywhere near the Governor’s office. And we are not going to let her buy this election with a bunch of lies, and her ads, and the people need to be aware of it. She’s trying to deflect from what she’s been up to with all these bogus ads on me. I frankly think she and Katie Hobbs would be just as bad for the state. The RINOs and the Socialists are just as bad for the state.
America First all the way.
Recently, days before dropping out and endorsing Robson, RINO Matt Salmon admitted that Robson has a “blank check” and she is trying to buy the election.
Lake posted the video to her rumble, where she called Robson out straight to her face. The crowd cheered on Lake’s savage remarks.
Robson had to take the stage after this:
Lake: Karrin, where are you? We want answers to why you’re duping thousands of people out of money. It’s wrong. Here’s the sad thing, guys. She doesn’t need the money. The sad thing is, she’s being funded by a billionaire. She doesn’t need to dupe senior citizens out of their paycheck. But she did it to trick people into thinking she has grassroots support. It is unethical and it’s outrageous, and I think she should give every single one of them a refund. Everyone deserves a refund. I had to lay that out because you got to know who’s on the ballot. We cannot put an unethical person with no integrity who is trying to buy this election on the ballot. We can’t put her in the governor’s office. We’re at a crossroads in Arizona, guys. We’re at a crossroads whether we want to go back to the McCain style, McCain Mafia running the show, or do we want to go America first? I don’t want to go back to an Arizona where the high-price McCain consultants are running the show. I want to go back to an Arizona where We The People are in charge of our government.
Democrat-led House passes bill to codify same-sex marriage, redefine institution
By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter | July 20, 2022
Read more at https://www.christianpost.com/news/house-passes-bill-to-codify-same-sex-marriage-into-law.html/
Members of the Democratic-led House who are fearful that the U.S. Supreme Court might one day overturn the Obergefell v. Hodges decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide passed legislation Tuesday that seeks to codify same-sex marriage into law.
Forty-seven Republicans joined all House Democrats in passing the measure by a vote of 267-157. The bill now moves to the Senate where it’s expected to fail because at least 10 Republicans would need to join Democrats to pass the legislation for it to be signed into law by President Joe Biden.
Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., announced in a statement Monday that he and several other House members had introduced the “Respect for Marriage Act.” The legislation would also “repeal the Defense of Marriage Act” (DOMA), which defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman.
While Obergefell and an earlier Supreme Court decision, United States v. Windsor, struck down DOMA as unconstitutional, supporters of the Respect for Marriage Act are attempting to codify same-sex marriage into law. The push for the codification of the 2015 court decision follows the June 24 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling that overturned the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide.
In a concurring opinion in Dobbs, Justice Clarence Thomas chastised the idea of substantive due process as “legal fiction.” Noting that the doctrine of substantive due process was used to insist that the Constitution contained a right to abortion, he suggested that the Supreme Court should “reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents,” including Obergefell.
However, Thomas agreed with the majority opinion in Dobbs that “[n]othing in [the court’s] opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.” Additionally, although he characterized Obergefell and other cases involving substantive due process as “demonstrably erroneous,” Thomas indicated an openness to determining “whether other constitutional provisions guarantee the myriad rights that our substantive due process cases have generated,” including same-sex marriage.
While expressing support for same-sex marriage, the bill’s lead sponsors pointed to Thomas’ concurring opinion as the justification for passing the legislation. Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., the bill’s sponsor, lamented that “three weeks ago, a conservative majority on the Supreme Court not only repealed Roe v. Wade and walked back 50 years of precedent, it signaled that other rights, like the right to same-sex marriage, are next on the chopping block.”
“As this court may take aim at other fundamental rights, we cannot sit idly by as the hard-earned gains of the equality movement are systematically eroded. If Justice Thomas’ concurrence teaches anything it’s that we cannot let your guard down or the rights and freedoms that we have come to cherish will vanish into a cloud of radical ideology and dubious legal reasoning,” he added.
Nadler described the legislation as “an important step toward protecting the many families and children who rely on the rights and privileges underpinned by the constitutional guarantee of marriage equality.” He cited the bill as necessary to “provide stability and certainty for these children and families.”
The Respect for Marriage Act garnered 160 co-sponsors in the House, all Democrats. One Senate Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, has emerged as a leading supporter of companion legislation in the Senate.
In the event that the Supreme Court does overturn Obergefell, each state would have the authority to decide whether to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The Respect for Marriage Act declares it illegal for any state to deny “full faith and credit to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other State pertaining to a marriage between 2 individuals, on the basis of the sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin of those individuals.” In other words, all states must recognize same-sex marriages as valid.
Critics of the Respect for Marriage Act, including Terry Schilling of the conservative advocacy organization American Principles Project, have warned that the legislation will negatively impact religious liberty in the U.S., much like the Obergefell decision did: “The consequences of the court’s redefining of marriage have been extensive, affecting nearly every American. Many have seen their First Amendment rights threatened or curtailed, such as bakers, florists, photographers and others.”
“Parents have been shocked to discover lessons on sexual orientation injected into their young children’s schools and smuggled into the TV shows they watch and the books they read. In many workplaces, one cannot even quietly oppose the ideology of ‘Pride’ without risking one’s career,” Schilling maintained. “While many Americans assumed the good faith of the LGBT movement those years ago, we should know better now.”
Schilling warned that “to give in on this issue would mean surrendering to ideologues who wish to stamp out the traditional family and punish all of us who still hold to this ideal.” He urged “every Republican who truly cares about marriage and the family to vote against this legislation,” vowing that “conservatives, and especially parents, will be watching to see who our true allies are.”
The push to codify Obergefell into law follows the House’s passage of the so-called “Women’s Health Protection Act” last week. The legislation, which the House approved before the Dobbs decision, would codify the right to abortion into federal law and limit the ability of states to pass pro-life laws.
In the most recent vote, which took place Friday, the Women’s Health Protection Act received the support of 219 members of Congress, while 210 opposed it. All but one Democrat, Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, voted in favor of the legislation and it received no support from House Republicans. The bill is expected to fail to achieve the necessary votes for passage in the evenly divided Senate, as it did in both February and May of this year.
Public opinion polling reveals strong support for same-sex marriage nationwide. Data collected in 2021 from the Public Religion Research Institute revealed that 68% of Americans support same-sex marriage compared to 30% who oppose it. Same-sex marriage has achieved majority support in most states, while majorities of residents in only two states, Arkansas (52%) and Mississippi (55%), oppose it.
Before the Windsor and Obergefell decisions, voters in 30 states had approved constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage, according to Pew Research Center. A 2006 effort to add a ban on same-sex marriage to the U.S. Constitution failed to achieve the necessary votes for passage.
At the same time, voters in three states had voted to legalize same-sex marriage at the ballot box in 2012, while Minnesota voters rejected a ballot measure seeking to ban same-sex marriage in the state constitution. A handful of other states had legalized same-sex marriage via state legislative action or a state court decision while the remaining states either had statutory bans on same-sex marriage or laws that did not explicitly ban or legalize it.
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
Daniel Horowitz Op-ed: BLM activist who burned cop car gets lenient sentence to protect him from deportation
DANIEL HOROWITZ | July 20, 2022
Setting a police car on fire during a riot is a pretty serious crime, don’t you think? Some might even call it an insurrection. Yet, in the case of BLM arsonist Ayoub Tabri, he was sentenced to just one year in prison. How much do you think a January 6er would have served for such a crime?
Ayoub Tabri, 25, of Arlington, Virginia, was arrested in 2020 for tossing a lit road flare on a Pennsylvania state trooper’s car during a BLM riot in Philadelphia. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Joel M. Slomsky imposed a 364-day sentence on him rather than the 37 to 46-month sentence recommended by prosecutors. As for the reason, the Philadelphia Inquirer is rightfully confused about whether this is because BLM is a protected cause or because this man’s immigration status made him a protected class.
“But it remains to be seen whether his sentence was a sign of a softening stance toward those charged with similar offenses during the May 30, 2020, unrest or an outlier influenced by the unique immigration consequences that Tabri — a citizen of Morocco who has lived in the U.S. as a green card holder since he was 6 years old — faced because of his crimes.” Tabri was a beneficiary of the diversity visa lottery.
The judge noted in the sentence that because a sentence of 365 days or more would be defined as an “aggravated felony” for the purpose of deportation law, he purposely sentenced him to 364 days to avoid removal from the country. Given the time served in jail pre-trial, this means Tabri will be released immediately on three years’ probation.
In other words, a member of a protected class got protection for engaging in a crime on behalf of another protected class.
Across the board, we have witnessed leniencies for BLM rioters, including those who burned down police stations because judges sympathized with their cause. However, in this case, it is particularly egregious. We should embrace the opportunity to deport violent foreign nationals, not shun it. Typically, we are forced to constantly deal with the revolving door of American violent criminals who continuously get out of jail and reoffend. But why should we keep other countries’ criminals? If indeed this man’s deportation would be difficult, that is a decision ICE should make, not a federal judge.
The Inquirer notes that although this case had an extra wrinkle because of the immigration status, the new Biden U.S. attorney allowed other BLM arsonists to plead down from a seven-year mandatory sentence. Despite videos of Tabri and his friends armed with flares and a hammer, skateboards, a bike lock, and a crowbar attacking other cars, “Assistant U.S. Attorney Vineet Gauri described the plea agreement and the government’s reconsideration of the arson charge as part of “the Justice Department’s holistic view of these cases around the country.”
“A holistic view?” In other words, even though these crimes could have and often did lead to death, serious bodily injury, and widespread destruction, because it was for the “right” sort of cause, they went lenient on the defendants. They took into account prior records and the fact that Tabri otherwise wasn’t in trouble with the law. Contrast that to J6 defenders who served honorably in the military, never had a criminal record, and weren’t nearly as violent, yet they were held without bail.
But the two-tiered justice system is exactly what America’s judicial system has devolved into. Earlier this week, federal prosecutors dropped charges against nine crew members of Stephen Colbert who were caught illegally in the Capitol filming skits. Yet, a 69-year-old cancer patient is serving two months in prison for simply being present in the Capitol after the cops had opened the doors for people to enter.
And no, it’s not because our government suddenly has a Singapore-like affinity for order. Less than 10% of those arrested during the endless riots in Portland wound up being prosecuted. The violence was unprecedented. Yet, at the same time, prosecutors are seeking a 15-year sentence for Guy Wesley Reffitt, who behaved badly on Jan. 6 but never entered the Capitol building and is being charged with the vaguely defined “obstruction of an official proceeding,” a statute that is being used as a de facto terrorism charge. At this rate, had Reffitt torched a cop car at Capitol Hill, they’d be seeking the death penalty. And no, one’s immigration status would never have gotten in the way of a tougher sentence for a J6er.
Equal justice is a thing of the past.
Judge says man smirked at family of high schooler he fatally shot after a hearing. For that, judge revokes man’s bond, holds him in contempt, sends him to jail.
By DAVE URBANSKI | July 20, 2022
Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/judge-says-jacob-meadows-smirked/
A Virginia judge said Jacob “Alex” Meadows, following a plea hearing last week, smirked at the family of a high schooler he fatally shot in 2018 — and for that, the judge on Monday revoked Meadows’ bond, held him in contempt of court, and ordered Meadows jailed until his October sentencing, the Virginian-Pilot reported.
Meadows, 23, pleaded guilty July 11 to manslaughter and drug charges for the shooting death of Ocean Lakes High School student Christopher Ross during a drug deal, the paper said, adding that prosecutors in exchange agreed to drop murder and gun charges against Meadows and promised to seek no more than a seven-year prison term. However, Circuit Court Judge Steven Frucci determined Meadows smirked at and moved toward Ross’ family after last week’s plea hearing, the Virginian-Pilot reported, which angered the judge.
Christopher Ross’ older brother Robert testified that after the hearing, he and other family members were outside the courtroom when they saw Meadows passing by them in the hallway, the paper reported.
Ross said Meadows smirked as he approached, the Virginian-Pilot reported, adding that Ross was upset and accused Meadows of, ”walking up” on him. Ross’ family members then grabbed Ross and pulled him away, the paper said.
Meadows — who’d been out on bond for the last two-and-a-half years and had been allowed to remain free until sentencing — testified Monday he was happy when he left the courtroom but said it was because he could go home to be with his daughter, the paper reported. Meadows also said he didn’t intend to show any disrespect toward the Ross family, the paper added.
Frucci said courthouse hallway video shows Meadows did smirk and move toward Ross after last week’s hearing, the Virginian-Pilot said, adding that the judge also called Meadows’ actions “abhorrent” and “calculated.”
Frucci also told prosecutors they’d “have a hard time getting me to accept the [plea] deal” and recused himself from presiding over Meadows’ sentencing, the paper reported.
The Virginian-Pilot said Frucci presided over the plea deal hearing but added the deal wasn’t accepted at that time — and the new sentencing judge could reject it.
Christopher Ross on Dec. 11, 2018, went to Virginia Beach residence to buy a quarter-pound of marijuana for $400 from a teen who lived there, the paper said. Meadows supplied the marijuana to the teen and was present when Christopher Ross arrived, the paper said.
Ross lifted his shirt to display a gun tucked in his waistband, grabbed the marijuana, and ran, the paper said. Meadows, also armed, chased Ross and fired several shots, the paper said, adding that Ross was struck five times and died at the scene.
Senate Advances Massive Subsidy Bill for the Semiconductor Industry
By MAX KEATING, CONTRIBUTOR | July 20, 2022
Read more at https://dailycaller.com/2022/07/20/senate-advances-massive-subsidy-bill-semiconductor-industry/
The Senate voted 64-34 to advance a more modest version of a long-debated bill that would subsidize domestic semiconductor production late Tuesday night. The Chips Act is primarily designed to increase semiconductor production in the U.S. in order to decrease dependence on China and other Asia-based manufacturers, and provides $52 billion in subsidies, as well as tax incentives to the chip industry. Tuesday’s vote was a procedural one, meaning that it needed to pass so that senators can officially vote on the bill sometime later this week or early next week, according to CNBC.
Semiconductors are used for virtually all of the electronic devices that power the modern economy, including smartphones, radios, TVs, computers, video games and advanced medical diagnostic equipment, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association. Supply chain issues during the pandemic led to chip shortages that drove up prices for all of these goods and created economic pressure on everyday Americans, according to previous Daily Caller News Foundation reporting. (RELATED: Big Tech Lobbies Congress To Weaken ‘Guardrails’ Against Chinese Business)
If the official vote is approved in the Senate, the bill would go to the House of Representatives for approval and ultimately President Joe Biden’s desk to be signed into law, CNBC reported.
Both chambers have passed considerably more ambitious subsidies for semiconductor producers in the past, but have failed to come to an agreement on reconciling the two bills, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Senate’s vote on this scaled-back version now comes as semiconductor manufacturers have threatened to move planned U.S. chip fabrication plants elsewhere, the WSJ added.
The Biden administration preferred a larger bill, but says that getting something passed on chips funding is paramount.
“There are several parts of the broader legislation that are important, and I am committed to doing whatever it takes to get them over the finish line in this Congress. But chips funding is the only part of this bill that we have to pass right now to avoid facing devastating consequences,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said, according to the WSJ.
The White House did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
NeverTrump’s Latest Attempt to Dismiss Election Concerns is Particularly Dishonest
BY: MOLLIE HEMINGWAY | JULY 19, 2022
If they want to convince voters outside their bubble, they should try far harder than they did with this report.
MOLLIE HEMINGWAY
VISIT ON TWITTER@MZHEMINGWAY
A group of establishment Republicans released a report last week claiming to make “The Conservative Case that Trump Lost and Biden Won the 2020 Presidential Election.”
It is not news that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. The report’s strawman-slaying title is intended to suggest that concerns about the integrity of that election are without merit. But the report itself simply goes through court decisions and recounts, listing how they turned out. It focuses on questions about “fraud,” rather than the significant and extremely well-substantiated concerns Republican voters have about the election.
“Their methodology obscures the vast majority of actual material to consider if one were honestly engaging the problems,” said Capital Research Center President Scott Walter. His group has documented the significant role played by Mark Zuckerberg’s private funding of government election offices, a massive issue that the report almost completely elided.
Other major issues were also downplayed or ignored, even as court cases and investigative reports vindicate some of those concerns. In just the last few weeks, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, for example, ruled that unsupervised ballot drop boxes and third-party ballot trafficking both violate state law. In its report, the group claimed its conservative Republican bona fides were beyond question, asserting that no members “have shifted loyalties to the Democratic Party, and none bear any ill will toward Trump and especially not toward his sincere supporters.”
In fact, the group is a combination of NeverTrumpers and people who thought the Republican Party had gone off the deep end long before Trump’s arrival. The report uses misdirection and red herrings regarding “voter fraud” to avoid talking about genuine and substantiated concerns regarding illegal voting and election integrity. And it is sourced to left-wing corporate media outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, hardly places to go to make any case, much less a credible or conservative one, about the 2020 election.
From the Voter-Rejected Wing of the GOP
Report co-author Thomas Griffith, a former federal judge whose enthusiastic support of Ketanji Brown Jackson was singled out by President Biden in his speech when he nominated her to the Supreme Court, told NeverTrump publication The Dispatch: “The idea is that it’s written by conservatives, for conservatives. We recognize the people who are watching [Morning Joe and CNN] are probably not the people we’re primarily interested in.”
Paul Ryan’s former chief of staff David Hoppe, another co-author, admitted the group got much support for its project from volunteers at high-powered, inside-the-Beltway law firms. Still, corporate media accepted the group’s framing of itself as “conservative.” Even a cursory look at the list revealed that to be overly generous if not completely misleading.
Ted Olson served as former President George W. Bush’s solicitor general, but he is most well known for being the brains and muscle behind the legal campaign to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples. When President Trump sought to have his help to fight against the Russia collusion hoax that so undermined the country, Olson declined to help. He did go on television to publicly disparage the president after declining his request. Olson even tried to get Mitch McConnell to backtrack on his policy of not holding hearings for Justice Antonin Scalia’s replacement until after the 2016 election. Olson is routinely derided by critics as a “conservative attorney for sale,” and someone who has “always been a hired gun.”
Former federal judge Michael McConnell argued on PBS in support of the second impeachment trial for President Trump.
Former federal judge Michael Luttig is already well known for helping out the Democrats’ Ja 6 Committee. He rather famously left the federal bench for Boeing — “taking his toys and going home,” as some put it at the time — after President George W. Bush didn’t put him on the Supreme Court. The Wall Street Journal noted that his resignation letter pointedly didn’t mention the younger Bush.
Luttig also serves on the advisory board of “The Safeguarding Democracy Project,” led by Richard Hasen, an election law professor who criticizes voter ID laws. Its mission statement claims Republicans who questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 election were acting in bad faith, and that election integrity laws passed after the 2020 election “threaten the cornerstone of American democracy.”
Gordon Smith, one of the report’s co-authors, wasn’t even considered a conservative in the old Republican Party back when he served as a senator from Oregon from 1997-2009. Before he became a high-paid lobbyist for the National Association of Broadcasters, he was assessed the fourth most liberal GOP senator after Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, both of Maine, and Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter, who officially joined Democrats in 2009. By 2008, when he was defeated, Smith scored only a 33 out of 100 by the American Conservative Union. Just this year, he declined to endorse a Republican for Oregon’s gubernatorial race.
Former Sen. John Danforth of Missouri, another co-author, thought the Republican Party was too conservative by 2005, arguing in The New York Times that it had become a party overtaken by conservative Christians. Danforth, an Episcopal priest, was a public supporter of efforts to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples. He has said the worst mistake he ever made was supporting Sen. Josh Hawley’s political aspirations.
All of the report’s authors are or were Republican, including Hoppe, but they tend to inhabit parts of the old Republican Party that voters are increasingly rejecting, not just for their weak policy proposals but for their habit of cooperating with left-wing media in its unceasing attempts to undermine the new Republican Party’s political strengths.
The Man Who Lost the Decades-Long Battle for Election Integrity
Two days before the razor-thin 2020 presidential election, report co-author Ben Ginsberg, the long-time dean of establishment Republican election lawyers and former counsel to Bush’s presidential campaigns and Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns, did one of the most hostile things imaginable to Trump and his voters. He went to The Washington Post to beg Americans to vote for Democrat nominee Joe Biden (“My party is destroying itself on the altar of Trump.”) He and other NeverTrumpers represent exceedingly little of the Republican Party outside of the Beltway, but in an election that came down to 43,000 votes across three states, they should get at least some credit — or if you’re a Republican voter, blame — for pushing Biden and other Democrats over the finish line and bringing the country to where it is today.
Ginsberg, it turns out, bears more responsibility for how the election turned out than most, and his op-ed explains why. It wasn’t just that Ginsberg used his Republican pedigree in order to elevate his hatred of Trump when Republican campaigns desperately needed unity and strength. By November 2020, such tantrums were common among the Republicans who used to control the party. No, it was that he went on an absolute tirade against election integrity itself, adopting every Democrat Party talking point against Republican efforts to secure the ballot box. Two days before the 2020 election had even occurred — and long before this report came out last week — his mind was made up. Proof of systemic fraud simply “doesn’t exist.” He compared concerns about election integrity to a hunt for the “Loch Ness monster.”
He praised practices enabling widespread unsupervised voting, including unattended ballot drop boxes, drive-through voting operations, and third-party ballot trafficking. He belittled concerns about even weak and insufficient verification systems, such as signature matches. He said Republican lawyers fighting against such practices were engaging in “voter suppression,” a common Democrat talking point.
Months after Ginsberg’s 2020 op-ed mocking election concerns, Time magazine itself confirmed what many Republicans suspected: the existence of a “conspiracy” by powerful Democrats to push through these unsupervised voting practices, creating an election system to ensure the outcome they desired. As Time wrote, it was “a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.”
The successful effort to change hundreds of laws and processes across the country to enable tens of millions of unsupervised ballots to flood the system was led by Marc Elias, the same Democrat attorney who had been behind the creation of the Russia collusion hoax, the lie that Trump didn’t win in 2016 but stole the election by colluding with Russia.
Democrats had been working for decades to accomplish these changes. For nearly four decades, it was Ginsberg’s job to fight them. As the Republican Party’s top election lawyer, Ginsberg was supposed to be the person responsible for pushing back against coordinated and well-funded Democrat efforts to expand unsupervised voting and to make it difficult to scrutinize the resulting ballots that were far more susceptible to fraud. It’s not surprising that Republicans fared so poorly against the coordinated Democrat campaign to water down election integrity over the last 20 years given that Ginsberg was the guy supposedly leading their fight.
Early on in my reporting for my best-selling book on the 2020 election, I spoke with dozens of Republican attorneys at the state and federal levels who had found themselves battling this widespread and coordinated takeover of the 2020 election. I asked some of them about Ginsberg’s op-ed and work, and how he compared to Elias.
They told me that Elias doesn’t have much going on in his life other than his election work, and he wakes up each morning with big plans on how to manipulate elections. (A look at his active social media presence supports the characterization.) They explained to me that Elias isn’t as good of an attorney as he promotes himself to be, but he’s the type who will argue whatever he needs to for a client. If that means arguing that voting machines aren’t secure — as his group did in 2020 when trying to overturn the results of Rep. Claudia Tenney’s election in New York, he’ll do it. If it means mocking the idea that voting machines aren’t secure — as his group did in 2020 when battling Trump election challenges that same year, he’ll do that too. He takes whatever side of an issue he needs to in order to secure a favorable outcome for his clients.
These sources noted that Ginsberg, by contrast, usually managed to help Elias and other Democrats in their efforts. They said he was a decent and well-connected Beltway attorney, but he didn’t seem to care much about election integrity, relative to his Democrat counterpart’s efforts. He was a fine lawyer who tended to do a mediocre job, they said. In fact, as soon as he retired, Ginsberg’s written and spoken statements have sounded like they could have come from Elias.
Ginsberg even recently co-founded a group to fight election integrity efforts, claiming that such efforts to ensure transparency and accountability put election officials at risk. His co-founder David Becker, formerly with radical left-wing group People for the American Way, now runs the Center for Election Innovation and Research, one of the two groups Zuckerberg funded during the 2020 election with $419 million. Those funds enabled the private takeover of government election offices in the blue areas of swing states. With Luttig, Ginsberg serves on the advisory board of the Safeguarding Democracy Project, the group opposed to election integrity efforts.
So, What About the Report’s Substance?
The report was presented as an exhaustive look at what happened in the 2020 election. In fact, it only really looked in a cursory fashion at a limited set of lawsuits officially raised by Trump attorneys in the days and weeks after the election.
The report’s co-authors admitted to The Dispatch that the information in the report wasn’t new. Indeed, it’s seemed mostly to be a summation of what law associates might find in Lexis-Nexis — a recitation of legal cases and brief mentions of a few reports and audits in six battleground states. It did not dig deep into any of them, merely restating the circumstances by which cases were dismissed or resolved. And it doesn’t even do a good job with that.
For instance, it characterizes a report from the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty as finding, “no evidence of widespread voter fraud and no evidence of significant problems with voting machines — in fact, they found that Democratic candidates performed worse than expected in areas with Dominion machines.” Of course, “widespread voter fraud” and “voting machines” are red herrings, intended to divert people from dealing with what actually happened to control the election outcome in Wisconsin.
Contrast the report’s summation of the issue in Wisconsin with the actual first statement from the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty on its website for election integrity, which says, “It is almost certain that in Wisconsin’s 2020 election the number of votes that did not comply with existing legal requirements exceeded Joe Biden’s margin of victory.” The Supreme Court of Wisconsin has shown that claim isn’t even up for debate, and while that is not “voter fraud,” per se, many Americans would describe the efforts to enable illegal voting methods as “widespread election fraud.”
The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty’s report was a particularly modest account. Other independent analysts and econometricians analyzing Wisconsin have found that Zuckerberg’s meddling had a far greater impact than they realized. Here’s what a team of academics wrote about the Center for Tech and Civic Life’s takeover of government election offices in Wisconsin’s biggest cities:
Without CTCL involvement in Wisconsin in 2020, Wisconsin would be a solidly red state. We estimate that CTCL’s investment in seven Wisconsin counties resulted in 65,222 votes for Biden that would not have occurred in CTCL’s absence. That’s more than three times as big as the final 20,800-vote margin between Biden and Trump in 2020.
Private funding of elections overwhelmingly went to Democrat areas of swing states, produced skewed results, and violated legal requirements prohibiting partisan effects to nonprofit work. The situation in Wisconsin was so bad that leftist activists funded by the Zuckerberg operation led to multiple resignations of local officials in protest.
The report barely mentions, and therefore fails to adequately deal with, Zuckerberg’s funding and what it paid for, merely mentioning that some legal challenges had cited it. This is despite its central role in the outcomes for multiple swing states, including Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia.
The report does a poor job dealing with Georgia as well. In its opening paragraph on Georgia, the report’s authors write, “Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a conservative Republican, conducted a full manual recount of the five million ballots cast, confirming Biden’s victory. At Trump’s request, election officials then conducted a post-certification recount, which also confirmed Biden’s victory. Secretary Raffensperger, with the assistance of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, evaluated and rejected numerous claims of fraud.”
There are multiple major problems with this characterization of Georgia. The report authors didn’t seem to understand, or failed to accurately convey, the situation with the Trump lawsuit filed there. To take just one example from that lawsuit, it alleged a serious problem with illegal voting. Shortly after the election, voting data expert Mark Davis noticed a problem of 40,000 votes cast by people who had registered to vote in a county different from the one they had claimed to move to. It was one of the dozens of categories mentioned in the Trump lawsuit, and in the intervening months, it has been confirmed that more illegal votes were cast in this manner than comprises the margin of victory for the race.
One could perform a recount a thousand times and not detect, much less deal with, that problem. A recount would simply recount the ballots, whether they were legal or not legal. As for the suggestion that Raffensperger took seriously, much less rejected, claims of illegal voting, the evidence does not support the claim. He fiercely fought the campaign’s efforts to determine the precise number of illegal votes during the time they needed the information for their lawsuit. After The Federalist reported on this issue last year, and a television station confirmed the existence of the problem, his office was cagey about whether they were going to investigate, much less do anything about it. His office also made excuses for the illegal voting, suggesting it was not a major concern for his office.
The issue isn’t even addressed in the report, and discussions of the lawsuit and how it was handled are completely inadequate and erroneous. The problem with the lawsuit — which did not allege fraud and which had many substantiated claims — was that it could not get a hearing before Jan. 6. The problems the campaign’s legal team had getting a hearing were Kafka-esque, and the report doesn’t seem to understand what the issues were, much less how they were handled.
Other major issues are neglected in the report. Because of the limited scope and lack of depth to the report, it doesn’t even acknowledge, much less give credit, to a 2022 Pennsylvania court decision ruling that all no-excuse mail-in voting in the commonwealth is unconstitutional. In its discussion of the Arizona audit, which found large and systematic problems in election administration, it quotes the response from the hostile Maricopa County Board of Supervisors as definitive. Likewise, it quotes news articles from the Associated Press, Washington Post, New York Times, and other left-wing media outlets as definitive responses to election concerns. This is laughably unserious.
Reports Like This Harm the Republic
When Luttig went to the one-sided Jan. 6 star chamber, he concluded his remarks by saying that Trump and his supporters were “a clear and present danger to American democracy” because of their ongoing concerns about election security. The report repeatedly asserts that the reason why there is a lack of trust in elections is because of Trump and his supporters. In fact, one of the most important reasons to fight the coordinated campaign to weaken election integrity is that the lack of controls that make fraud easier to commit and more difficult to detect is responsible for the lack of trust in elections.
Following the contentious 2000 election, former President Jimmy Carter and Republican James Baker co-chaired the bipartisan Commission on Election Reform. Its 100-plus-page report was called “Building Confidence in U.S. Elections,” and it treated election integrity as vitally important to that goal.
Rather than mocking or dismissing concerns about election integrity as unimportant, the Carter Commission stressed the problems caused by bloated and inaccurate voter rolls, nonexistent or faulty voter-identification procedures, and unsupervised voting. It said these practices threaten elections and democracy, as do misconduct by partisan election officials, the use of inconsistent procedures in different precincts, and an overall lack of transparency. The report noted that mail-in balloting is associated with higher risk of fraud and could also undermine faith in elections.
Making sure that voting is fair is one of the most important issues in the country. That’s why it remains a top concern to Republican voters, even as Washington, D.C., rolls out every member of the establishment to try to force them to fall in line with weak and insecure voting provisions.
If they want to convince voters outside their bubble, they should try far harder than they did with this report.
Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is the Editor-in-Chief of The Federalist. She is Senior Journalism Fellow at Hillsdale College. A Fox News contributor, she is a regular member of the Fox News All-Stars panel on “Special Report with Bret Baier.” Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post, CNN, National Review, GetReligion, Ricochet, Christianity Today, Federal Times, Radio & Records, and many other publications. Mollie was a 2004 recipient of a Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship at The Fund for American Studies and a 2014 Lincoln Fellow of the Claremont Institute. She is the co-author of Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court. She is the author of “Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections.” Reach her at mzhemingway@thefederalist.com
Trans-identified inmate transferred from female prison after allegedly impregnating 2 women
By Samantha Kamman, Christian Post Reporter | July 19, 2022
Read more at https://www.christianpost.com/news/trans-inmate-removed-from-female-prison-after-impregnating-women.html/
A trans-identified male who allegedly impregnated two women while incarcerated at a women’s prison in New Jersey has reportedly been transferred to a new facility. Demi Minor, a 27-year-old who identifies as a woman, was transferred to Garden State Youth Correctional Facility, a Burlington County prison for young adult offenders. Minor is serving a 30-year sentence for manslaughter and is eligible for parole in 2037. New Jersey Department of Corrections spokesperson Dan Sperrazza told NJ.com Saturday that Minor has been moved to a vulnerable unit and is the only “woman prisoner on site.”
The transfer comes three months after NJ.com reported that two women at Edna Mahan Correctional Facility, a women’s only prison, became pregnant after “consensual sexual relationships with another incarcerated person.”
In a separate statement to NJ.com, the NJDOC clarified that it was investigating the matter but could not offer further comment.
“NJDOC cannot comment on any active investigations,” the statement read. “The Department has zero tolerance for abuse, and the safety and security of the incarcerated population and staff are of critical importance.”
The New Jersey Department of Corrections did not immediately respond to The Christian Post’s request for comment.
In a Friday post on the Justice 4 Demi blog, Minor alleged that prison guards conducting the June 24 transfer were violent. Minor claimed being moved out of the women’s prison has caused “psychological damage.”
“I don’t think DOC realizes the psychological damage that has been done from moving me out of a womens prison to a male facility, its harsh and, I don’t know what its like to live as a man, and I refuse to ever revert back to such habits or behavior,” the inmate wrote.
In June 2021, New Jersey enacted a policy requiring prisons to house inmates based on their self-declared gender identity following the settlement of a lawsuit filed by a trans-identified male prisoner.
The Doe at the center of the case was incarcerated in men’s prisons for over 18 months and was allegedly denied female commissary items and “misgendered” by correctional officers.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a complaint on the inmate’s behalf in August 2019 after Doe was transferred to the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility.
Sperrazza revealed to NJ.com that the Department of Corrections continues to operate under the policy agreed upon in the settlement, Sonia Doe v. New Jersey Department of Corrections, et al. However, “the department is currently reviewing the policy for housing transgender incarcerated persons with the intention of implementing minor modifications.”
Decisions regarding the housing of inmates like Minor, according to the spokesperson, “are made within the parameters of the settlement agreement which requires consideration of gender identity and the health and safety of the individual.” The settlement mandated that the department keep the policy in place for a year, with the agreement’s timeframe ending last month.
“Defendant New Jersey Department of Corrections has adopted and agrees to maintain in good faith policies, procedures and practices that ensure the health, safety, and dignity of transgender, intersex, and non-binary inmates in its custody, including ensuring inmates’ ability to live in line with their gender identity,” the settlement agreement reads.
ACLU-NJ Staff Attorney Tess Borden praised the settlement, stating that it put into place “far-reaching policy changes” that “recognize and respect the gender identity of people in prison.”
Others, however, such as Leanna DeLorenzo, the New Jersey state contact for the U.S. Chapter of the Women’s Human Rights Campaign, expressed fear that such a policy could threaten women’s safety. In an interview last July with CP, DeLorenzo contended that being a “woman is not a feeling.”
“Women are harassed in prisons by correctional officers and go through things with men constantly,” she added. “Now they’re allowing men to be housed with women because the man decided he ‘feels’ like a woman. It’s unacceptable.”
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